


Anchor

by gingerpunches



Series: serendipity [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Bottom Connor, Connor whump, Drama, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Smut, Some angst but not a lot, Tension, Top Hank, easy affection, hank is shy but likes connor too much to deprive him of affection, idk im making it one, im here to ruin your lives once again, interfacing while having sex, is that a tag now, later on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-06-12 21:53:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 64,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15349548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingerpunches/pseuds/gingerpunches
Summary: There were some things Connor knew, and other things he didn’t. What he did know for certain is that he was given a chance. A chance in the form of Hank, and really, he couldn’t have asked for anything more.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i'm back! and hopefully here to ruin all your lives in a much more positive way!

There’s very little that escapes an android.

Connor pretends to forget some things - mostly for Hank’s benefit. He’ll forget to turn the heater down because he knows Hank likes being exceptionally warm, especially during the winter; he’ll forget to walk Sumo until Hank is finished with dinner so both of his organic family members get proper exercise after stuffing themselves. He forgets to call Gavin back about a case to give Hank a peaceful weekend and he forgets to wake Hank up after a rough night of nightmares and memories too vivid to have been dreams.

Little things. Inconsequential things. Forgetting not because he truly doesn’t remember - he does - but because it makes life that little bit more enjoyable and that little bit more peaceful.

Markus, however, apparently doesn’t feel the same way.

Markus had insisted on inviting Hank and Connor to Carl Manfred’s estate for a “get together.” Connor didn’t know what that meant, especially since he barely knew any of the people in Markus’ inner circle. He also didn’t think Markus owed them much at all, let alone an _apology,_ even though he knew Markus had been burning to give him one since the events of last month _._ And it’s only when they’re buzzing the doorbell on a chilly morning in mid-January that he realizes Markus never was going to let them off the hook of giving them one in the first place, their weeks apart over the holidays be damned.

“It’s nice to see you both,” Markus greets brightly. He steps aside as the front door automatically swings open, allowing them inside. Connor follows Hank and takes the other man’s coat when he shrugs out of it.

Markus gestures to the coat rack, and Connor hangs it accordingly. His smile is sunny as he switches his mismatched gaze between them. “Was the drive alright?”

Hank grumbles. “Coulda picked a day that wasn’t a goddamn weekday. Traffic drove me up the fucking wall.”

“He means he wanted to sleep in,” Connor teases. Hank pinches him, so Connor turns his best smile on him, relishing in Hank’s pinched expression. “I told you to retire early, Hank.”

“Yeah, yeah. You guys have coffee?”

Markus nods. He seems amused by their interactions, eyes dancing. “Sure. How do you take it?”

“Just black is fine,” Hank says. “I’ll do the rest.”

Markus nods and steps away towards what Connor assumes is the kitchen. “I’ll get that started for you. Lounge is through there - everyone is expecting you.”

He motions towards the open double doors directly across from the estate’s entrance. Connor can see tall windows dumping warm morning light across dark leather couches and wood floors past the doors, and familiar figures lounging around, talking amongst themselves. Something in his stomach knots at the thought of seeing Markus’ inner circle again, but then he’s interrupted by a familiar voice cutting through his head.

 _How does he like his coffee?_ Markus says. Connor jumps at the sudden intrusion, his head snapping around to face Markus. The other android smiles gently as Hank continues around the antechamber, mumbling about the paintings and zebra rug.

 _Cream and three sugars,_ Connor says back. He catches Hank’s eyes and intertwines their fingers when he returns, turning his attention back on him as he speaks to Markus through their connection. _Thank you. He’s nervous._

_Of course. Make yourselves comfortable in the meantime - I won’t be long._

Markus disappears into the kitchen, leaving Hank and Connor to stand awkwardly in the entranceway. Connor wraps his fingers around Hank’s hand and squeezes, turning a gentle smile on him when Hank raises a brow.

“You sure his buddies are okay with you?” Hank asks. His tone is cautious, his blue eyes betraying nothing of the tentativeness Connor knows he feels. He can read it in the tense line of his broad shoulders and hands, every muscle coiled and ready to defend. Connor appreciates the gesture and nods, leaning forward enough to press their foreheads together.

“North dislikes me, but she dislikes everyone. Her girlfriend is much nicer. So are Josh and Simon,” he says quietly. “I’ll be alright. I promise.”

“I’m not gonna sit by and watch them yank you around if it happens,” Hank warns. He squeezes Connor’s arm and then steps away, though not far enough that Connor can’t detect his body heat. He tunes his sensors to be more sensitive to it and then enters the lounge, automatically schooling his expression into something neutral as all heads turn to watch him approach.

An older man is first to greet him, his wide mouth stretching easily into a smile. Connor scans him and the database comes back with his name - Carl Manfred, though he waits until the other man wheels around one of the occupied couches and reaches out with one scrawny hand to introduce himself.

“You know, the news didn’t do you any justice,” Carl says. Connor shakes his hand and is surprised at the firm grip. “Your eyes are much more emotional in person.”

Connor feels a smile break his neutral facade. “Thank you. That’s very kind.”

“It’s true. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Connor sidesteps to allow Hank and Carl to greet each other, feeling warmth collect somewhere under his ribs. Hank brushes his shoulder with his hand, his expression gentle as Carl turns around and returns to his spot back at the head of the coffee table.

It’s a gentle comfort that gives Connor the confidence to sink into one of the couches next to Josh. Hank sits on his other side, mumbling a thank you as Markus returns with a cup of coffee made to how he likes. He shoots an accusatory look at Connor while taking a sip - Connor smiles placidly, and Markus smirks on Hank’s other side.

“What have you been up to over the holidays?” Carl asks. Connor turns his attention back on the only other human in the room.

“We had a nice Christmas and New Year with some friends from the precinct,” he says. “We exchanged gifts and had a calming end to the year. It was quite relaxing.”

He pulls out his new wallet and holds it out for Carl to inspect, who makes an impressed face as he folds it open. “That’s good. I heard the past month has been kind of hard for you.”

It's a probing question that gets North and Markus both fidgeting. North shifts against the woman to her left, folding up her knees and wrapping her arm around the other’s shoulders along the back of the couch. She’s also a WR400, though her hair is jet black and her features are east asian. Connor flicks his gaze over her and then to Simon as the other android moves to watch Markus with a hard stare.

Carl waits for an answer. He’s looking resolutely at Markus as well, and Connor gathers that maybe the revolutionary hadn’t been as straightforward with his involvement in Connor’s near-death last month than he thought. Hank presses his side against Connor, providing warmth and comfort, and Connor relaxes.

“I was nearly killed and lost my memory briefly, yes,” Connor says. Carl’s eyes darken and Connor can hear Markus shift uncomfortably next to Hank. Connor rushes to defend him, his hands clenching in his lap. “But it wasn’t anyone’s but that other android’s fault. She would have done anything to get to me and the data stored on my CPU. Very little would have stopped her.”

Carl seems to mull this over before he nods in something like acceptance. He hands Connor’s wallet back and smiles again - everyone in the room deflates, tension bleeding out of them like bad blood from a packed wound.

“Well, I’m just glad you’re alright. Markus was upset for a good while and wouldn’t tell me what was wrong until you got better.”

“You’re telling me,” Hank mutters. “I couldn’t fuckin’ think straight.”

Connor turns a sympathetic look on him. “I’m sorry. I should have been quicker.”

“No.” Hank’s tone leaves no room for argument - and it draws every stare in the room, Markus’ sharpest of them all. “The only thing you should be sorry about is my punk ass not having the sense to shoot her back.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Markus says gently, apologetically. Connor hates that look on his face, especially when it’s trained on him.

Hank grunts and waves him off. “Please. Let’s just - not talk about it.”

Hank hurts because of that morning. A lot. He blames himself even though neither of them had any idea what was waiting for them, and it had sparked a good number of arguments since then. They usually end with Connor bundled up against Hank’s chest, his ear pressed against his sternum, his heartbeat thick against his skull. Hank hurts, and he probably won’t stop hurting, especially over Connor’s pain and wellbeing.

But it could be soothed. Connor learned early how to comfort Hank, and while they’re surrounded by curious eyes, they’re also silent ones - nothing sensitive will leave this house. Connor brushes his knuckles over Hank’s cheek, pushing hair back behind his ear in the same movement.

Hank doesn’t respond verbally, but he does lean into the touch. Connor can see how uncomfortable he is: the scowl of his mouth and the hardness in his eyes, all of that tension barely melting away as Connor slides his hand back around Hank’s own.

He lets the other man be with his coffee and turns back to the group. Josh and Simon are looking politely away, and North is in quiet conversation with the woman next to her. Carl’s eyes are soft when Connor meets them, but he doesn’t know how to respond to them beyond just staring.

Carl takes the burden from him with a gentle smile. He gestures around the group, drawing everyone’s attention back to him. “These are all my kids,” he says. Josh sighs with a smile and North and Simon shift uncomfortably. Carl snorts at their reactions. “Oh, please. You all are.”

“Don’t argue with him, guys,” Markus drawls. “You’ll make him paint angry portraits of you.”

“North is angry all the time,” Simon mumbles. North reaches across the woman between them and punches his shoulder even as they both grin when Simon shrinks away.

“Children, children,” Carl says. “Are you going to let me introduce our new addition?”

They all shut up, to Connor’s surprise. He watches as all eyes turn to the woman next to North, fondness and affection deep in all of them, but especially North’s.

“Thank you.” Carl holds his hand out towards the woman cuddled against North’s side, his own expression softening. “Connor, this is Dylan. Dylan, this is Hank and Connor.”

Dylan smiles, her smile bright as she waves.

“Hello,” she says. Her voice is smooth and comforting, like a singer’s. “I’m sorry to hear about what happened to you. That sounds awful.”

The pleasantries don’t feel forced with her. Connor feels himself relaxing back into Hank’s arm, his thundering heart slowing.

“Thank you.”

She nods. Her eyes shift to Hank, nothing in her eyes telling Connor that she holds the same disdain for humans that he can see in North’s eyes. That sets Connor at ease somewhat, though he can feel Hank tense as he takes another sip from his coffee.

Her gaze slides away as Markus collapses into the chair opposite Carl at the other end of the coffee table. He looks at Connor and Hank apologetically, a lame smile gracing his handsome features.

“Oh no,” Hank says. “I don’t like that look. Not on you.”

Markus’ look gets worse, brows turning upwards as if he was in pain. “I’m afraid this wasn’t just a social call.”

Connor feels his metaphorical stomach drop. He arranges his face into something neutral and keeps his tone even so as to betray nothing. “Oh?”

“You’re really not going to like this,” North says, though it’s more to Hank than Connor. Hank scowls and gives Markus a dirty look.

At that moment, the doorbell chimes a pleasant note throughout the estate. Markus shoots up out of his seat - throwing another lame look at Hank and Connor as he does - and then goes to answer whoever it is that rang the bell. Hank stands as well, turning to follow Markus with a dark look in his eyes.

Connor catches North and Simon’s sympathetic looks as he turns as well. He watches as Markus allows in a short, petite woman with blonde hair and a taller man carrying a large black bag. Connor can’t scan it from his place in the lounge but he recognizes the shape as being a camera bag.

“Fuck no,” Hank spits. He yanks Connor up by the arm and fixes an accusing look on Carl. “You knew about this?”

Connor turns in time to see Carl give a sympathetic look. “They wanted to ask questions “where it all began.” Well, for Markus, that was here.”

“And for me it was a on a boat currently resting at the bottom of the Detroit canal,” Connor bites out. North, Simon, and Josh all turn surprised looks at his tone - Dylan just looks confused. Connor ignores them, the angry heat in his chest coiling around his circuits and spine, gripping him so hard he nearly chokes.

He never thought Markus would spring an interview on him so early after everything that’s happened. He expected questions, sure, especially from North and Josh. They were the two most skeptical of his alliance to Markus, and were still wary of his motives given his devotion to Hank. It made sense that he would be interrogated even after everything that had happened in the last month.

But this? An interview with what was likely a known news casting service? He turns an unimpressed look on Markus as he leads the woman and her cameraman into the lounge, giving some sort of grand announcement as he gestures to everyone that Connor doesn’t hear over his heart thundering in his ears.

This was a low blow, even for Markus. Markus seems to know this by the pained look on his face as he motions for the woman to introduce herself.

Her smile is guarded, yet easy. Connor scans her and comes back with her profile: Diana Addler, respected journalist for Channel 16 and a number of other independent American news sources. She was generally a liberal journalist with little bias, but he doesn’t trust her anyway, something in him so uncharacteristically distrusting of her that it almost scares him.

She doesn’t seem to notice - or care - about his obvious discomfort, or Hank’s. She waves her hand and looks around the group, making sure to meet their eyes individually as she does.

“Hello, my name is Diana Addler,” she greets. Her voice is confident, trained up from years of having to speak over those around her. It doesn’t set Connor at ease. “I was interested in interviewing the androids that were paramount to the revolution - and the humans that had a significant hand in helping as well. Markus was kind enough to set up this meeting so that I might have my chance.”

Surprisingly, North is the first to greet her back. She stands and shakes Diana’s hand, all flawless grace, the edge to her attitude momentarily gone. Connor knows it’s a trick the moment North grips Diana’s hand just a bit too hard, judging by the pinched corner of Diana’s smile.

“I’m North,” she says. They drop hands and North steps aside for Dylan and the others to introduce themselves.

Diana is graceful in repeating everyone’s names, her tone sincere. She compliments Carl on his obnoxious scarf and Josh’s smart glasses, her smile easy. She gets to Connor and holds out her hand, eyes flicking immediately to his right temple and then back to his eyes. Connor hates it but he shakes her hand anyway, not bothering to return her smile.

“Connor,” he says shortly.

“It’s nice to meet you, Connor,” she says brightly. “What a nice suit!”

He bites his tongue. Hank snorts beside him, not bothering to greet her properly.

“I’m not doing this,” he says over her introduction to him. “I literally got fuckin’ kidnapped during the revolution. I’m not gonna sit here and pretend like I did anything important.”

He pushes past Diana and Markus and moves towards the door out of the lounge. Connor bites the inside of his cheek and follows him, catching up in four long strides and snatching Hank’s arm when he catches up.

“Connor, don’t even _start,”_ Hank hisses. He rounds on Connor, something like anger and resentment in his eyes. Connor acknowledges that anger with a soothing brush of his hand up the arm he grabbed so he’s lightly gripping Hank’s shoulder instead. He can hear Markus apologizing to Diana behind him but tunes him out, barely suppressing his own disdain.

“You were instrumental in my deviancy,” Connor says. He’s aiming to sound even and fails when he hears his voice waver just a little at the end. “You are the reason I broke my programming. Markus was just the person that asked the final question to push me over the edge.”

Hank colors, a ruddy blush that’s handsome on his features. He knows Hank hates it, but Connor loves it.

“She’s going to ask shit and then spin it around against us,” Hank growls. “These types of interviews never end well - and with android rights still in the works, it’s fucking dangerous to be playing with people like her. One wrong slip and you’re on your way to getting disassembled at Cyberlife.”

 _Oh._ That’s what this was about. Connor bracket’s Hank’s shoulders with his hands, careful to keep his distance with two new strangers in the room watching them, letting his eyes and voice convey his sincerity instead of a kiss.

“Hank, Markus wouldn’t allow her within ten miles of this house if he knew she was a threat to what he built,” he says quietly. “I don’t like it either, but there is nothing to be immediately afraid of. We’re safe. I’m safe.”

Hank bites his lip. He cups Connor’s elbows, smoothing his thumbs over Connor’s bicep in an affectionate gesture. His eyes flick over Connor’s shoulder, using his height to glare at presumably Diana and Markus. He drops his hands eventually, his expression tightening in concession, a sound in his throat like a pained groan escaping him.

“One wrong move,” Hank says. He holds up his index finger to emphasize his point. “One wrong move and we’re going home.”

Connor nods. He relaxes, Hank’s ultimatum somehow comforting. “Okay.”

Hank makes an unimpressed face and then gestures for Connor to take the lead. Connor accepts gracefully and returns to the group, noting Markus’ still apologetic expression. Connor ignores it even as he meets Markus’ eyes.

“We will participate in the interview,” Connor says. Diana’s face lights up, and she turns to her cameraman, telling him to unload his stuff. Markus steps around her and pats Connor and Hank’s shoulders lightly.

“I’m sorry for tricking you,” he says, tone low.

“I better get a nice drink out of this,” Hank grunts.

Markus laughs nervously. “Sure. Carl has some expensive whiskey, if you want?”

He ignores Connor’s glare as he moves to pour Hank a glass from a heavy-looking crystal tumbler. Hank takes it and pointedly doesn’t drink it, just swirls the amber liquid around his glass. Connor feels pride swell in his chest as Markus dips his chin, understanding passing across his expression from the rude gesture, then steps back at Diana’s beckoning.

She sets them all up in Carl’s studio, with Carl on one end of the lineup and Hank on the other. Carl’s still in-progress portrait of Markus is laid bare behind them, a wash of blue and turquoise in the otherwise bright room washed in the warm light of the sun outside. Connor has to fight down the urge to play with his quarter as Diana puts North to his right, then Josh, then Simon and Markus. Dylan stands to the side, her expression unreadable, something like contempt swimming in her dark eyes as her fellow androids are practically manhandled by Diana’s obsessive staging.

Once she’s satisfied and the cameras are set up - a smaller one trained on her while her cameraman operates the other, pointing it at Connor and the others - she clears her throat and arranges a notebook onto her lap, her fingers hovering over the holographic keys.

“So I’ll just start with Markus, and then move down the line,” she says. “Is that okay with everyone?”

A murmur of “sure”’s and “okay”’s fill the room, and then silence. Diana’s smile gets impossibly wider.

“Great! And if you have any tidbits to add to the story, feel free to speak up! My understanding is you all know each other pretty well, so that should make for an interesting banter on camera.”

Connor feels suddenly out of place. He knew Markus - considered him a friend, even - but the others were near-strangers. North held a contempt for him that he couldn’t find the energy to argue with, and Josh and Simon were cordial at best. He couldn’t blame them after what he’d done (especially Simon), but having it pointed out so blatantly by Diana hurts in a way he can’t readily explain.

 _I’m sorry,_ he hears Markus say over their network connection. Connor allows the barest hints of hurt and discomfort flow through their connection before shoving it away, pulling his focus to Hank’s hand resting on his knee and Diana’s line of questioning as she starts the interview.

She’s true to her word, and begins with Markus and Carl. Mostly superficial questions at first - what was Markus’ purpose before the uprising, what was his relationship with Carl like, did he enjoy any hobbies outside his law making with the President. It was an easy banter that sparks after Markus explains his slog through the android dumping ground and his subsequent journey to Jericho, one that begins to be supplemented by the others as their stories become intertwined.

Connor recognizes some of the events where his and Hank’s investigations had crossed over, but doesn’t say anything. He lets the interview continue on without him, content to just listen to a side of the revolution that he had the barest understanding of. Hank seems to be fine with it too, his palm still warm on Connor’s thigh, an anchor to the present as Connor’s thoughts continue to piece together the events of those fateful weeks as they corresponded to what Connor and Hank had been doing too.

He must have lost track of time, because then Hank is nudging him with his elbow gently, stirring him from his inner thoughts. Connor straightens and pins Diana with an attentive stare as she smiles at him, small and understanding.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” she says. “Do you want me to repeat my question?”

He replays the audio his data banks recorded as he drifted. She had asked his name, but he nods anyway, giving her the satisfaction of leading her own interview.

“I know we greeted each other, but for the sake of the camera - what’s your name?”

“Connor,” Connor says. Diana nods and turns her stare to Hank, asking the same question.

“Lieutenant Hank Anderson,” Hank says. Connor smiles minutely at the pull of rank.

“And what did you do before the revolution?”

The question is aimed at them both, but she’s still looking at Hank, so he answers first. “I was - am - a homicide detective for the Detroit police department. Connor is my partner.”

“Right,” she says. She turns to Connor. “But what did you do before? Was your function similar to detective work now?”

The word _function_ rubs him the wrong way. He wants to snap at her, to correct her and just say _job._ He wasn’t a mindless machine to be ordered around anymore, and even implying that he had been pulls at the anger hidden deep inside him like nothing else ever has.

He clenches his jaw and swallows it down anyway. He knows his LED is yellow by the way Diana’s eyes track to it, betraying his agitated thoughts. It makes him angrier, but still he shoves it down.

“I was initially designed to hunt and apprehend deviants,” he says, surprised by his own even tone. North tenses beside him. “I am a prototype model that Cyberlife are probably loathe to admit they lost because of my subsequent deviancy.”

“So you’re one of a kind?” Diana says.

“Not precisely, but the other Connor models have not been released, at least to my knowledge. Their CPU and memory banks are blank, so it is likely Cyberlife destroyed them.”

Diana hums, then moves on. “I noticed you keep your LED, as opposed to the others here.” She gestures to her own temple. “May I ask why?”

He clenches his teeth. He doesn’t really know why himself, but now that she’s brought it up, he understands instantly.

“Because I have no interest in hiding what I am,” he says. He blinks, then turns a sheepish look down the line of androids beside him. “No offense.”

Markus snorts a laugh. Josh and Simon look amused too, and North just looks her normal amount of pissed.

“None taken,” Markus says. “You probably couldn’t pass for human anyway.”

Connor recognizes the jab and rolls his eyes. “Thanks.”

He feels tension bleed off him with the easy banter. Diana’s next couple of questions are rude but easy - things like his specific model and his specific processing capabilities. She hadn’t asked similar questions of the others, but he tries not to show his offence on his face as she moves on and quizzes Hank.  

The rest of the interview passes without incident. Diana was incredibly interested in Connor and Hank’s current work, and the shootings from several weeks ago that left Connor in pieces. Hank is short with her, unwilling to share many details, and Connor steers her back to the revolution so he isn’t more likely to blow up on her than he knows he might be. She concludes the interview, then arranges them to have still photographs taken. After that, she says goodbye, gives them all her card should they have any questions, and packs up and leaves.

“Thank you for sitting through that,” Markus says after she leaves. Carl and the others had retreated to the lounge again, leaving the studio empty except for Markus, Hank, and Connor. Hank grumbles but Connor nods, accepting Markus’ veiled apology.

“Just let us know next time,” he says. “Hank isn’t as scary as he wants you to think.”

 _“Hey!”_ Hank smacks his arm, his glare hot on Connor. Connor smiles and leans over to peck his cheek, his chest constricting at the blush that crawls up the other man’s neck.

Markus laughs. “Right. I just didn’t want you guys to miss this opportunity, I guess. We need all the good press we can get.”

“Bribery works,” Hank grumbles. “Like whiskey, or fancy scotch. I saw what Carl has in that liquor cabinet in there.”

It’s Connor’s turn to hit his arm. Hank rolls his eyes and sighs, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“Fine. You’re welcome, robot-messiah. Can we please go home now? I need to talk to someone that doesn’t have ulterior motives. Preferably my goddamn dog.”

“He means me,” Connor says. Markus raises an amused brow, his smile wide.

“Uhhuh,” he intones. “I’m glad Diana didn’t catch on to _that_ particular bit of your relationship. Hank might’ve exploded.”

Hank _does_ explode, sputtering and waving his arms. “Alright! We’re leaving! Connor, say goodbye to your freaky friends and let’s just go the fuck home.”

Connor smiles as Hank storms out into the lounge. He hears North tease him, something about needing cuddles away from prying eyes, which only makes Hank curse louder. Markus grips Connor’s arm and meets his eyes, the sincerity in them unable to dim the amusement there in his gaze.

“Take care of him,” Markus says. “I see now why you turned deviant.”

Connor dips his chin, feeling heat crawl up his spine. “Yes. You asked the question, but he made me able to see the answer.”

Markus’ smile turns soft. His eyes find Simon outside in the lounge, his gaze lingering.

“I think I know what you mean.”

Connor nods. He knows why he and North couldn’t work out, even as he struggles to understand his own relationship. Heightened feelings and newfound sapience was hard to wrestle with even with the more experienced of them, but he understands now why North and Markus weren’t a pair made to last. One was too fierce and angry at the world that had wronged her, and the other had been protected and loved in this house, this place that had nurtured a good and peaceful heart.

Connor feels that nurturing warmth in Simon, too, though they’ve barely spoken to each other. He grips Markus’ shoulder and steps away, dropping his gaze when Simon’s finds theirs.

“Take care of him, too,” Connor says. Markus smiles at him, all soft lines and soft eyes. “The world is changing too quickly not to have a firm hold on it.”

 _“Connor!”_ Hank shouts. Markus laughs and gestures to the door, the moment broken.

“Go. It’ll be alright.”

Connor nods and takes his leave. He waves at the Jericho group, their assorted goodbyes following him out into the entranceway where Hank waits impatiently. Connor leans forward and kisses him, smiling at North’s obnoxious cat whistle from the other room.

“Let’s go home,” Connor says quietly.

Hank shifts uncomfortably but returns the kiss. It fills Connor with a hot heat, bright and melting along all his sensors and biocomponents. He takes Hank’s hand and follows the other man out to the car, the uneasiness in his nonexistent gut from earlier gone now that he was enveloped in Hank’s easy affection. The effect lasts the whole ride home where he makes his feelings more physically known, pushing Hank up against the closed door once they get inside and melting against him. Hank, thankfully, doesn’t complain, and Connor doesn’t hesitate to reward him for his good behavior during the day by dropping to his knees and showing Hank just how proud he is of him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a lot longer than i thought! but yesterday was my birthday so here is my gift to all of you!

“Why  _ do _ you keep the LED?”

Hank’s tone is soft enough not to catch any more eyes than are already on them, but Connor tips his head towards Hank for more privacy anyway. They’re at the DMV at the behest of the new Android Identification stipulation - a small law that outlines a need for androids to carry identification. A driver’s license, basically, but with their name, model number, and serial number along with height, gender, weight, eye color, and hair color.

Hank had disliked it at first. Well,  _ disliked _ was probably too weak a word - he’d been furious. Scaling up and down the hall in nothing but his boxers and an academy tee shirt, yelling about androids once again having something to set them apart from everyone else. It took Connor a good three hours to calm him down, and even now, he’s not sure the anger Hank feels is completely gone.

But he understands, he really does. He wants the license because it makes him feel like he’s fitting in, but anyone can look at it and instantly know he’s different. Not that he wasn’t, or wasn’t proud of that, but the prospect of toting something around with such identifying information as his serial number was a little nerve-wracking.

It takes every ounce of Connor’s self control not to turn his face and hide in Hank’s neck as eyes from other curious visitors to the DMV track to him as they sit around him. Hank purposefully sat them at the end of the second row of chairs, Connor bracketed by the rest of the room on his left side and Hank on the other. Hank’s arm is a warm weight around the back of his chair and he takes comfort in it, relaxing back against it and angling his body a little more towards Hank so he can find his hand with his own.

Hank lets their fingers intertwine briefly as Connor deactivates his skin up to his wrist. Hank isn’t wearing the interface - and hasn’t since Christmas - but Connor feels a slight push back against his systems reaching out to Hank, a hum in response to his own frequency. It comforts him enough to ignore everyone else in the room and he retracts his hand, Hank’s fingers trailing across his palm in such a gentle way that leaves him feeling slightly ticklish.

“Sorry,” Connor murmurs. Hank shrugs, his expression slack in nonchalance. Connor swipes his thumb over his LED, feeling nothing of where the circle is but knowing it’s there all the same, the last brand he wears connecting him to his identity. 

“I meant what I said in the interview,” he continues. “I’m not afraid of who or what I am. I was at first - scared, I mean. Of what I was capable of and Cyberlife’s ability to take manual control of my programming remotely. But now with that possibility eliminated, I’m just myself, and the LED is part of that.”

“Even if it turns everyone around you into a mind reader?” Hank teases. Connor raises a brow, the corner of his mouth twitching up into a smile. Hank rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean. It’s like a little mood ring stuck sideways on your head.”

“I don’t always have a good handle on my emotions, so maybe it’s a good thing people can see how I’m feeling,” Connor teases back. “Besides, would I look the same without it?”

Hank quirks his brow again. “I didn’t think you were the vain type, Connor.”

He isn’t. Not really in the strictest sense of the word, or even the loosest. He cares about how he looks where his job is concerned, and follows dress protocol even though Hank deigns not to (and hasn’t gotten written up for it yet, surprisingly). His hair falls a certain way because it was designed to and he can’t alter his appearance otherwise - besides the LED.

But he can’t find it in himself to remove it. It’s too much of him now, a part of him that reminds him where he came from. If it was gone, it would be too much like trying to be what he fought so hard  _ not _ to be. 

He turns another sly smile on Hank, shaking off his heavy thoughts. “I’m vain for you, Lieutenant.”

He preens his hair while Hank grumbles and tries to hide the blush on his cheeks with the collar of his jacket. A couple sitting beside them shift uncomfortably - it was quiet in the DMV despite the crowd, but Connor couldn’t bring himself to care if someone overheard their conversation. He wasn’t afraid of strangers knowing the nature of their relationship. They probably wouldn’t see these people again, anyway.

He keeps his distance, though, and only leans his weight against Hank when the other man’s hand around his back rubs circles into his shoulder. Hank starts to play with his phone, messing with settings and checking through various social media apps, so Connor drifts as well, keeping an ear out for their number to be called while he takes in his surroundings.

There’s maybe a little under a hundred people waiting in the DMV, most sitting in the chairs provided in the center of the large office while others that came in later stand to the sides. Interconnecting desks line the back wall, angling around one side of the DMV where workers sit behind computers with customers standing ahead of them. Screens hang from the ceiling intermittently, displaying the last ten called numbers and advertisements for local businesses and driving safety videos. Sometimes news flashes by, updates and reminders on the new android laws scrolling past in bright text, catching Connor’s eye as it goes. He feels eyes settle on him as it does, then fade away as the screens filter through their pre-recorded content. It’s an uncomfortable pulse of being watched and then not watched, a feeling be can only battle through with Hank’s warmth shielding him from the worst of the glares.

His number gets called and he elbows Hank to get his attention. Hank straightens and stuffs his phone into his pocket and wordlessly follows Connor to the desk indicated by the PA system’s announcement, angling himself around Connor’s right side to protect him from a woman’s stare at the desk next to them.

The DMV worker looks up at them, only slightly able to conceal her surprise as her eyes find Connor’s LED, and then his face. She carefully arranges her face into something neutral and raises a curious brow.

“What can I help you with today?” she asks.

“I’m here to acquire legal identification for myself,” Connor says. The woman smiles a bit and Hank rolls his eyes, his tone teasing.

“An ID, if you don’t mind,” Hank says. “Sorry. He’s nervous.”

The woman smiles then, a genuine smile that sets Connor at ease. “Don’t worry. I can get you set up, though it might take a few minutes. Do you have all your paperwork?”

Connor nods and lays out the various sheets of paperwork the android identification act told him to bring. His manufacturing paperwork detailing his initialization date and all maintenance done since then, model manual, a sheet of barcodes and QR codes that match his CPU and memory array, and proof of residence - though the last one was optional. Most of this he acquired through strong arming Cyberlife to release it, even as they were reluctant to have such sensitive information out on one of two of their only operating prototype androids. The manual, especially, was quite damning - Connor had learned quite a few things about himself since acquiring  _ that _ particular piece of paperwork. 

Connor slides all of it towards the woman as his chest constricts with uneasiness. She could very easily flip through his manual and figure out just how easily he can be destroyed, but she does nothing with it, just thumbs to the back page to confirm his serial and model number matches the rest of his paperwork and then sets it aside. 

“Alright, let me just scan all this in,” she says. She types at her computer and then drags out a printer-scanner on a rolling track from below her desk. She systematically scans all of his documents, front and back, and then puts them up on the counter again for him to take. 

She then produces a long sheet of pink-tinted cardstock from a cabinet under her desk and sets it up on the counter, as well as a ballpoint pen. Connor reads it over, feeling his face twist in confusion.

“I thought all these tests were done electronically,” Hank says before Connor can beat him to it. The Lieutenant’s eyes are hard, with something close to anger pinching his lips into a line. The hand that he’s had on Connor’s waist feels suddenly a lot heavier than it did before. Connor fidgets with the pen uncomfortably.

“He has to take it while also disconnected from the network,” the woman explains plainly. Her expression is sympathetic while she holds up a data cord. “I can monitor your connection right here. It’s secure, and no one can see your system status except me. It’s all confidential.”

Connor bites his lip. Hank gives him a hard look, resentment and sympathy deep in his blue eyes. He nods once and steps back, giving Connor space. Connor swallows unnecessarily and takes the data cord, dragging it up and around his shoulder to plug into the nape of his neck. 

The woman taps a quick command into her computer and then the world just… falls away. He feels cut off and deaf, suddenly surrounded by nothingness as his connection to the internet and DPD network disappears right from under him. What was a constant hum in the background of his processes - checking and detailing information near-unconsciously as he worked through case files and his own thoughts - was gone, a rug ripped out from under him, a deafening boom of silence that leaves him only cognizant of what is around him.

He can still hear Hank’s heartbeat, and scan his vitals, and his scans return the exact amount of people in the room along with its dimensions and possible exits. His preconstruction of an escape route returns to him quickly and his internal check comes back green, but now he feels dizzy with the loss of everything else, a desperate sound leaving his throat as he tries to reconnect to the network.

But he can’t. He’s stopped abruptly before making the full connection, whatever block this woman has on him effectively booting him off his own attempt at finding that other crucial part of himself. She smiles at him sadly and motions to the test in front of him, her hands off the keyboard.

“I’m sorry, but they don’t want you to cheat,” she says. “It’s fast. I promise.”

Hank’s hands are on him again, a soft warmth around his shoulders that calms the silence surrounding him. “You’re alright, Connor,” Hank says soothingly. “It’ll come back.”

Connor nods his head jerkily and turns his attention back to the test in front of him. He feels how stiffly he’s holding himself and tries to relax, only minutely successful when Hank’s hands don’t leave him.

The test is a driving permit test and a citizenship test. He knows the answers, and marks all the correct bubbles quickly before handing the test back. The woman scans it through a thin scanner and smiles sweetly when it comes back through, something blinking on her computer that illuminates her face faintly in a green glow. She motions for him to take out the data cable and he does, briefly freezing as his system automatically reconnects to the internet and DPD network with a roar of noise that rattles his skull.

His ears still ring as she folds the cable and hides it under the counter. She scans his test into her computer and then looks up at him, her eyes bright.

“You did great. You passed,” she says. Connor feels his shoulders droop with the release of tension and hears Hank mutter a “damn straight he did”. “Would you like to continue with the process?”

“Yes, please,” Connor says. His voice cracks and he frowns, running a diagnostic on his voice synthesizer. Everything comes back normal, so he ignores it, chalking it up to stress.

“Great,” the woman says. “Let’s start with your name.”

“Connor.”

She asks for him to spell it, so he does. She hums and then turns to him again, still smiling.

“Model number?”

“RK800.”

“Serial?”

“313 248 317 dash 51.”

“Date of manufacturing?”

“August 2038.”

They continue like that, a back and forth of his information that she triple checks and confirms with his paperwork. She asks him to interface briefly with a secured tablet so she can get a fingerprint of his internal electrical frequency, something akin to a human fingerprint that can be used to identify him since he doesn’t have any. She also has him retract the skin of his forehead so she can scan the barcode above his right eyebrow, something be does but rather reluctantly. Hank watches, curious and guarded, his sharp eyes missing nothing. It makes Connor feel better as other customers come and go beside them.

Until a woman with blonde hair and a sharp face sidles up to the desk to their left, her teenage daughter beside her. Connor shrinks away from her unconsciously, his eyes focused on the woman scanning his paperwork.

“You’re letting this  _ thing _ get an ID?” the other woman says. Connor turns just in time to see her sneer at the DMV worker.

“ _His_ _name_ is _Connor_ ,” Hank snarls back. Hank’s hand tightens around Connor’s waist, bringing him in against the human’s side.

“I don’t care what its name is,” she says. “I don’t want it getting an ID.”

“Mom, please,” the teen says sullenly. 

The woman turns on her daughter with a hiss. The DMV clerk quickly intervenes, straightening from her chair with a stern look. Her name tag says “Natalie”, not visible to Connor up until now when she finally stands.

“If you can’t respect someone else’s choice to get identification, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Natalie says. 

“It doesn’t get a choice. It’s a machine.”

“I’m quite capable of making my own choices,” Connor cuts in. He hears Hank’s jaw snap shut and catches the warning glare Natalie shoots him, but ignores them both. Anger flares deep in his processes, hot and burning across everything he is, leaving ash in its wake.

He hasn’t felt this angry since Cyberlife’s attempt at overriding him. It feels -  _ good,  _ almost, and the stunned look on the blonde woman’s face is worth it. 

“Besides,” Connor says before she can open her mouth to say anything else. “It’s written law that androids are considered sapient. I would appreciate it if you allowed me to obey the law so I can purchase identification.”

She doesn’t snap back. Her face turns an ugly mottled red, as does her daughter, though she’s more embarrassed than anything. Natalie stays standing until she turns to the stunned DMV clerk helping her. Connor stops glaring her down only when Hank’s hand loosens the death grip on his hip.

“I apologize,” Natalie says, still within clear earshot of the woman. Connor tries to bottle up the heat still clinging to his insides, turning his attention to Natalie so he doesn’t snap any further. “Do you want to continue? We can schedule an appointment to take your photo if you would feel more comfortable.”

“We can come back,” Hank murmurs. “No shame in that, Connor.”

He would normally, but he feels petty enough to rub it in this woman’s face to not back down. He shakes his head, staring resolutely between Natalie and Hank, determined not to give his harasser the satisfaction of seeing him walk away.

Natalie smiles and nods. She sits back in her chair and resumes cross checking his paperwork, working quickly and having him sign a sheaf of papers outlining his newfound citizenship. She makes copies of those as well, then hands him the originals. 

“Okay, it all checks out,” Natalie says. She stands up from her desk and motions for them to follow her, and they do as she moves to a camera a couple desks down. The woman from before glares holes in Connor’s head, but he ignores her, Hank close behind him.

Natalie gestures to the standing backdrop on the other side, and Connor stands where the line of tape on the floor indicates the toes of his shoes should be.

“There’s a blue dot below the camera, and I want you to stare at it as I count to three,” she says. He nods at stares at a blue circle of tape below the camera rig, willing his body to sit still. Natalie types at the computer connected to the camera briefly and then counts down from three - a bright flash fills his vision and he waits for her next command, only moving when she smiles at the computer monitor.

“You take such nice pictures,” she says. “Come on. We’ll get you all finished and then you can go.”

Hank and Connor follow her back to her desk. The woman from before is gone, and Connor feels himself relax. Natalie prints out copies of his interim license and hands them back along with a paperclip, and he pins all of his documents together with it. She double checks everything, has him pay thirty-five dollars for the license, and then looks back at them sweetly. 

“You’re all set,” she says. “You should get your license in the mail within two weeks, and your citizenship papers should arrive shortly after. If there’s any problems, let us know and we’ll send new ones.” She grimaces, her pretty brows furrowing. “And I’m sorry. About that woman. Not everyone is going to see this as the progress it is.”

“Thank you. And it’s okay,” Connor says. “I never expected it to.”

 

She smiles sweetly. “You two be careful. And have a nice dat!”

Connor awkwardly waves at her and allows Hank to steer them through the crowd of people at out the door, the flood of the cold weather hitting him jolting him out of his thoughts.

“She’s lucky I didn’t punch her face in,” Hank grumbles. “Fucking Christ. They’re everywhere.”

Connor presses closer, intertwining their hands. A surge of warmth passes through him, like an ever-expanding balloon pressing against his ribs.

“Thank you for being here,” he says, his voice thick with affection. “And for letting me handle it.”

Hank sighs. “Yeah. Can’t make any promises about the next time.”

Connor accepts the answer and lets them drift apart again. He can’t argue with that, knowing that there  _ will _ be a next time. This was all still so new, and human attitudes never changed so quickly. It took days and years and centuries - they were nowhere near close enough to living peacefully together.

But the thought is nice enough that it keeps Connor’s mood high as Hank drives them back to the precinct. He stares at the little stack of papers in his lap, his name and other information printed under the word “citizenship identification”. The word android is nowhere to be found, the only indication that he is one being his lack of a surname and his model and serial number printed once under his first name. Everything else is standard for identifying humans, and that, more than anything else, sets him at ease.

 

——

 

Right up until they get to the precinct. Naturally.

“You  _ what?!” _

Fowler holds up his hands, attempting to placate Hank and failing rather spectacularly. Hank continues to fume, his hands wringing the back of the chair he refuses to sit in as he and Connor stand in Fowler’s office. Connor grips Hank’s shoulder, trying to catch his eyes - Hank avoids them, glaring at Fowler.

“It’s a requirement of everyone, and while we all know Connor will pass, I need it on record,” Fowler says. “The holidays are over and cases are coming in. He has to take the test.”

“Yeah, with a special little addition that no one else has to fuckin’ take. This is clearly trying to discriminate against him, Jeffrey. They can’t do this.”

_ They _ being the Detroit Police Academy, and  _ this  _ being Connor’s Academy test. The DPA wasn’t trying to train him, but they were going to push him past the normal limits their trainees were supposed to go, and even Connor - with all his sureheaded cockiness - understood this was too far. 

He had to take the test as normal, with the other trainees. Running the obstacle course to establish a baseline of his abilities, then weapon training he had to retake each year to keep up his firearm license. He couldn’t take the driving test until his license showed up, and while his weapon license was good for the precinct and allowed him to carry his service weapon, he had to take the combat final within a simulated hostage situation to be considered ready to use it in the field. 

He also had to take a  _ blindfolded _ hand-to-hand combat test that no other trainee was to take. He’s to be blinded and connected to a live update terminal so his proctor and viewing audience could monitor his systems, with the purpose of the test to stretch his sonar and scan systems as far as they could go. Simply dimming the lights wouldn’t blind him, so being blindfolded was the only way.

Hank, understandably, hates it. Connor is frustrated, but doesn’t let it show on his face.

“If I take this test,” Connor says, cutting off whatever angry retort Hank had ready, “would I be considered a graduate of the Academy?”

Fowler nods, turning a grateful look on him. “Yes. You pass all this, you get your diploma and can work as a full-fledged detective. No more tests until your next firearm update. Not even active simulation training like I initially thought.”

Connor looks at Hank. Hank glares back, icy blue eyes unreadable. Connor squeezes his shoulder and turns back to Fowler, his systems twisting anxiously even as he nods in assent.

“I’ll take it. I won’t argue if this is what I have to do.”

“They’re trying to break you,” Hank snaps. “They’re going to push you so fucking hard, Connor. Passing you is not what they’re interested in.”

“Maybe,” Connor soothes. “But I won’t give them the opportunity to take my job away, either.”

Hank doesn’t argue with that. He grimaces but let’s it be, pushing away from the chair and shrugging Connor’s hand away.

“Fine,” he says. “When is it?”

“They’re holding the test later today at two,” Fowler says. He reaches behind him and takes a manila folder off his desk. He holds it out to Hank, shaking his head when Connor tries to look as well. “These are for the people grading the test. Hank’s been chosen to grade along with three other proctors that have an objective opinion.”

Hank snorts. “ _ Objective  _ my ass,” he snarls. “Trying to push an android away from the one thing he fucking  _ wants  _ to do by designing a test that can only end in failure.”

“Do you doubt my abilities?” Connor asks. Annoyance colors his tone, slight enough that maybe Hank won’t notice, but there all the same. Hank notices it and shoots a lame look at him, his anger evaporating.

“I don't, Connor, I just -“ He sighs. He slaps the folder shut and rubs a hand over his face. “Fuck. I just don’t want them to push you any further than they’d push a human. It’s not a fair test if no one else is able to pass it.”

“None of this is fair. It hasn’t been fair since the first android was turned on, Hank.”

Connor’s words sober up both Hank and Fowler. Connor flexes his fingers then nods, resolute, something like resignation settling across his systems.

“I’ll do it. I’ll take the test.”

Fowler frowns. “Alright. They’re expecting you at the Academy.”

He doesn’t seem pleased with Connor’s answer. Connor understands - Fowler had disliked him at first, but seeing the androids push so hard for sapience rights had changed him for the better. He was just as worried about Connor as Hank was, and wasn’t going to sit quietly even if Connor went and took the Academy’s test.

He knows Fowler is going to raise hell and that makes him feel better about participating. Knowing that he has people in his corner sets him at ease.

“Fuck,” Hank hisses. He runs his hands through his shaggy hair, then presses the heels of his palms against his eyes.  _ “Fuck.  _ Alright. Let’s go.”

He scoops up the manila file Fowler gave him and leads Connor out to the bullpen. He trudges past Ben and Chris with little more than a grunted goodbye - Connor smiles at them sympathetically and trots behind Hank, trying to keep up with his partner’s bad mood.

“I’ll be okay,” Connor tries as Hank backs their cruiser out of the parking stall. Hank shakes his head, angrily staring at the road, the file in his lap.

“They’re going to ream the shit out of you, Connor,” Hank grits out. He holds up a finger as Connor tries to speak - Connor closes his mouth. “I can’t tell you what’s in this file, but I can tell you that this is all a load of bullshit. They’re not interested in passing you.”

Connor pinches his mouth into an unamused line. “Yes, Hank. I understand that they’re going to fail me no matter what I do. But it’s worth a shot if I get to keep my job.”

Hank fumes for the rest of the drive to the Academy. It’s a large, squat building located in a wide campus surrounded by manicured lawns and parking lots. The driving test section of the Academy is located west of the main building, and behind that is the outdoor obstacle course. The rear of the building is lined with trees that mark the beginnings of the Detroit nature reserve, a tall, black, spindly line of evergreens that make the Academy feel more imposing than it probably is.

Hank parks them near the entrance and gets out without saying anything. Connor follows him, his insides twisting, fear and anxiety gripping him for the first time today since they got back from the DMV.

His partner stops him before he can trek across the snow-caked lawn to the front entrance. Hank wraps an arm around Connor’s waist, pulling him close, his other palm skating up the side of Connor’s neck to cradle his jaw.

“I’m sorry,” Hank mumbles. Connor sinks into Hank’s warmth, tipping his head against Hank’s hand. Hank frowns, his eyes catching Connor’s. “Connor.”

“I know,” Connor says. Something grips his throat, stealing breath he doesn’t need. “I know, Hank, I just - “

He searches for words but can’t find anything that adequately covers just how afraid he actually is. He wants to keep his job; he wants to solve crimes and help humans and androids. He wants to make good on the chance Markus has given him in trusting him when he had no reason to and he wants to show Hank just how much he loves him and cares for him. He wants to pass this ridiculous test and just get on with existing with Hank and Chris and Sumo and -

Hank pulls their foreheads together, hushing Connor as he begins to hyperventilate. Connor focuses on that contact, on the press of Hank’s warm skin against his, Hank’s hand a hot brand along the line of his jaw. He wraps his arms around Hank’s shoulders and grounds himself there, willing his heart and thirium pump to just  _ stop _ for once.

“You’re gonna kick ass,” Hank murmurs. Connor nods wordlessly, his throat still tight, something like pain twisting his expression. Hank glances around them, making sure no one is around before he leans in and presses his lips against Connor’s. “Don’t worry about it. I know I talked a load of shit but you’re gonna pass this, Connor.”

The anxiety in his chest settles and he smiles, feeling pressure behind his eyes that he doesn’t immediately understand. It isn’t until Hank is wiping away tears from his cheeks that he realizes he’d started crying.

“Do you think I can pass?” Connor croaks. 

Hank smoothes his hands down Connor’s sides, his expression soft. “Yeah, baby. I know you will.”

Hank gives him enough time to school his expression into something neutral before leading him into the Academy. The entryway is sleek and dark, with granite countertops along the front desk and Detroit’s successful graduate photos lining one large wall to the left of the doors with spotlights shining on them. Connor spots a printed sign in a plastic stand on the front desk that says “now training androids!” He grimaces at it and follows Hank to the lone receptionist standing behind the counter.

“I’m Lieutenant Hank Anderson, this is Detective Connor,” Hank says. The woman quirks a brow at them but otherwise says nothing. Hank continues, his expression tightening. “I’m proctoring a test for Connor and other to-be graduates.”

The woman’s expression clears. “Oh, I apologize. Most of them haven’t arrived yet, but if Connor is the android they spoke to me about, he has some paperwork to file.”

She pulls out a clipboard with a pen attached and a sheaf of papers clipped to it. She holds it out to Connor with a slight smile.

“I feel like no one trusts me to fill out these digitally,” Connor says, an edge of hardness to his tone. He takes the clipboard as the woman’s smile drops in embarrassment.

“It’s policy,” she says lamely. She doesn’t follow up with a clearer explanation, so Connor pulls his glare off her and sits in one of the chairs opposite the wall of photos.

Hank collapses next to him. “The fuck is with all this paperwork? Do they not have access to your files at the DPD?”

Connor runs a quick search. He frowns and picks up the pen, his tone flat. “They do. They just want to make this as frustrating as possible in the hopes I get annoyed.”

Hank snorts. “Of course.”

Hank leaves him to fill out his documents while he browses the file Fowler gave him. Connor deftly fills in his information, annoyed that they ask for his model specifications like his endurance time while running, of all things. He doesn’t  _ have _ endurance, so he cheekily writes in  _ zero _ where they ask how long he can keep up a sprint or climb a vertical wall.

It all ends up being redundant - like he thought - because the moment he hands in the completed forms, the receptionist points them down the right hallway to the indoor obstacle course. They meet a tall man there wearing a black polo that says “instructor” in gold embroidered letters, his expression flat and eyes staring right through the both of them.

“Good afternoon,” the man says. Connor inclines his head and Hank grunts a hello. “I’m Instructor Williams, I’ll be proctoring your pre-test. Don’t worry about passing or failing this, this is just to determine your abilities.”

“You do this with all your trainees?” Hank says.

Instructor Williams fixes him with a hard look. “It’s policy.”

Connor bites back a sharp laugh. “Right. Should I change into some sort of uniform?”

“Changing rooms are to the left inside here,” Williams says. He leads them through the double doors into the obstacle course - a gymnasium-like room with black foam mats covering the floor under all the acrobatic equipment. He points to a door to the left just inside, a sign next to it saying “locker rooms”.

“There’s a change of clothes for you in there,” Williams continues. “You can leave your clothes in a locker.”

Hank nods when Connor turns a questioning look on him. Connor swallows his pride and enters the locker room, finding the bench around the S-shaped privacy wall with a stack of black clothes on top. His name is embroidered in gold on the left breast, surprisingly, along with his model designation. Connor strips quickly and pulls on the dark canvas pants and the polo shirt, threading the belt before he shoves his feet into the combat boots. 

He folds his suit neatly and carries it along with his wallet, badge, shoes, gun and holster to a locker close to the door. There isn’t an actual lock on any of them, so he decides to take his wallet and badge to Hank, who pockets them without comment.

“Are you ready?” Williams says.

Connor rolls his shoulders under the soft polo shirt. He didn’t tuck it in, thinking he would need the extra room for movement. He was right. “Yes. Where should I start?”

Williams leads him and Hank to a set of a pull-up bars. “The limit is twenty for pull-ups. And I know androids don’t get tired, but I have to see that you can do it.”

Hank snorts and rolls his eyes. Connor bites his tongue and hops up, gripping the tallest bar with both hands, and folds his feet under him at the ankle and begins to lift himself methodically.

He completes the full set of twenty quickly, and also completes the ninety pushups and hundred sit ups as well. He runs the acrobatic obstacle course in record time, his preconstruction of each route giving him an edge over his human counterparts. When he slings himself over the rock climbing wall with only two minutes and forty five seconds on his internal timer, Williams is sizing him up with an impressed look, his dark brows raised in amazement. Hank looks prideful, a dark smirk on his face, one Connor returns with something teasing.

“They weren’t kidding when they said you were a prototype,” Williams says. Other trainees are beginning to file in, already wearing the same dark clothes Connor is. Williams pays them no mind and scribbles on his clipboard. “Do you mind taking the vision test for me?”

Frustration bubbles back up under Connor’s ribs. He keeps his smart remarks to himself though, determined not to ruin this for himself. They’re doing this to annoy him on purpose, and he won’t give them the satisfaction.

Williams is pointing to a small white placard above the double doors that, from where they’re standing further inside the gymnasium, might have been impossible to read had Connor been human. But he’s not, and he easily adjusts his optical cameras to see it clearly and crisply even from yards away.

“‘Maximum Occupancy: Two hundred persons’,” Connor says. He can’t keep the frown off his face as Williams bobs his head and writes on his clipboard.

“Alright, you did good,” he says. The trainees that had entered the room earlier are inching closer, their curious eyes roaming over Connor. He ignores them even as his systems tense under the scrutiny. 

“You mean he broke every Academy record since this place was built,” Hank says. Williams shoots him a withering look, but doesn’t argue.

“I have to stay with these guys and proctor the same exam, so you guys go ahead to the final testing room,” Williams continues. “Lieutenant, you’ll be proctoring with me and two others behind the Instructor viewing room. You’ll see it once you enter.”

Hank crosses his arms. “Yeah. Just point the way, genius.”

Williams ignores the insult and looks right at Connor. “The final testing room is further down the hall. Take a right out this room and follow it to the end - they’re big doors, you can’t miss them.”

Connor nods and leads the way out with Hank close behind him. The other trainees follow them with their eyes - Connor doesn’t feel safe until they’re out of view and down the hall. 

“You doing okay?” Hank murmurs behind him. 

Connor slows down and turns towards him, allowing the tension in his shoulders and back to fall, his expression loosening. “Yeah, Hank. I’m alright.”

Hank’s palm cradles the small of his back. Connor can feel the hot heat of him through the thin cotton of his polo, and he leans into it, allowing this small comfort.

“You’re kicking ass. Just keep it up,” Hank reassures. Connor smiles and nods, feeling his chest loosen from the deathgrip his anxiety had on it.

The final testing room is just another indoor obstacle course, except this time it’s arranged to look like a small neighborhood. Plexiglass walls encircle it, reaching up above the roofs of the three buildings that have been built inside this larger gymnasium. The floor inside the plexiglass alternates between clean cut fake sod to dirt to concrete sidewalk, six foot wooden fences separating each building’s backyard and the beginnings of a black asphalt road starting in front of the neatly lined buildings. Hank finds the Instructor viewing room to the left, the plexiglass in front of it tinted black, a one-way viewing that prevents anyone else from peering inside. Hank doesn’t enter it, instead staying at Connor’s side as Connor scans the room.

There isn’t anyone else in here, either. Connor can hear faint voices inside the Instructor’s room, but doesn’t tune his sensors to it, instead focusing on the neighborhood replica inside the plexiglass. There aren’t any mats on the floor this time, and the neighborhood is brightly lit from three streetlamps place in front of each house, casting the rest of the viewing area into shadow.

“Kind of an odd setting to test your LADAR,” Hank muses. 

Connor purses his lips. “They aren’t really testing my LADAR. LADAR uses visible or invisible lasers to determine distance. My internal scanning systems use a combination of sonar and proximity heat sensors to determine the distance and precise location of objects and organic bodies close to me.”

Hank snorts. “Didn’t know I would get the manual definition.”

Connor delfates. “Sorry. I… feel a lot more nervous now that I see what they want me to do.”

“Trust me, I’ve been feeling like that since Fowler gave me this stupid folder.” He shifts back on the balls of his feet, his eyes finding Connor’s. “So your sensors don’t “see” like you normally do? Like, visually processing information or whatever?”

“No,” Connor says. He takes Hank’s hand and runs the other man’s fingers up the curve of his skull, stopping when he reaches what would be the lower point of his occipital bone if he had one. “The proximity sensors are housed here. They help me determine who or what is behind me, and here -“ he moves Hank’s hand so his fingers brush over each of Connor’s temples, “- they help me determine what is ahead and beside me. I don’t see this information visually, I just get proximity alerts with a numerical distance and whether the object is organic or not.”

Hank’s hand moves and cups his jaw. Connor leans into it as Hank’s expression softens, the anger edging his eyes ever since they got here dissipating.

“Don’t let them get close,” Hank says quietly. “I’ve taken the close combat test, and it’s hard enough fighting one guy when you can see him. But not being able to see him is gonna be hard no matter how many sensors you have.”

Connor nods. They separate after a while when the doors open again, Williams and two other instructors leading in the gaggle of trainees that they’d seen earlier in the other gym. One of the other instructors is a tall woman with dark features and her hair pulled back into a severe bun, while the other is a shorter, older man with greying hair and age lines carving into his light skin around his face. Williams motions for Hank to stand beside him as the trainees file in front of them, creating two neat lines of ten. Connor moves to stand in one of the lines but Williams shakes his head, gesturing for him to stand up next to him as well.

Connor does so, a knot forming where his stomach would be. He stands at parade rest with his hands behind his back, mimicking the trainees glaring at him. He looks over their heads as Williams begins speaking.

“You’ll all be taking this test today, but we have a new trainee, Connor, who will be going first,” Williams says. “He’s an android that will be taking a specialized version of the close combat test that the rest of you will observe and learn from. He’s already seen real combat, so don’t let this cloud your judgement of what he’s capable of. He’s also already an active detective for the DPD, so show some respect for him and learn from him.”

Connor feels a streak of pride fill him. He didn’t like Williams at first, but the small amount of praise warms him up some, and from Williams’ knowing look, he did it on purpose as the eyes of the other trainees fall away in embarrassment. Connor figures that Williams isn’t as thrilled to be pushing Connor like this like he initially thought, and Connor makes a note to thank him later for treating him as fairly as he could given the circumstances.

Williams introduces the two other instructors - Hadley, the woman, and Robins - and also introduces Hank with his rank. He gets a few curious looks, Hank’s reputation even now preceding him, and that also makes Connor feel warm with pride as well.

“Alright, let’s get this started,” Williams says. He touches Connor’s arm and leads him through a door cut into the plexiglass surrounding the fake neighborhood, leaving the door ajar behind them. He situates Connor in the middle of the street, his back to the Instructor’s one-way viewing room, and holds out a thick padded blindfold.

“It’s not going to be easy,” Williams murmurs. Connor takes the blindfold but doesn’t put it on. “Whatever happens, don’t stop fighting until all of your attackers are incapacitated.”

Attackers? Plural? Connor opens his mouth to question but Williams shakes his head, something like pain clouding his slate grey eyes.

“Just don’t stop fighting. I mean it, Connor.”

Connor nods, swallowing unnecessarily. Williams helps him fit the blindfold over his eyes, then walks him through pairing his systems to the computer inside the Instructor’s room. Once done, Williams pats him on the shoulder and leaves him there, blinded, his systems working overtime to compensate for the loss in vision. 

That anxiety is back, crawling up Connor’s throat and spine. He hears Williams close the door to the plexiglass and hears him enter the Instructor’s room, but after that there’s nothing, just the hum of the heating system somewhere high above his head and the murmur of the other trainee’s voices vaguely to his right.

“Okay,” Williams’ voice says, loud and scratchy as it comes over the PA system in the room. Connor jumps, but forces himself to relax. “Let the test begin.”

And then nothing. Connor waits, straining his systems as far as they can go, throwing sonar scans every which way and disappointed when they come back with nothing except the edges of the houses to his left. He takes an experimental test back, scanning behind him, frustrated. He takes another step, and another, then freezes when something pings back that wasn’t there before.

Connor tenses and waits. He waits, and waits, and waits, and then that ping comes back, moving closer. One appears ahead of him as well, several yards ahead and to the left. Connor takes another step back, his world nothing but darkness and proximity alerts, and twirls just in time as the first of the blows aims for his ribs and misses entirely.

After that, it’s movement and static, blackness and anger. Hands on his body, his weight being thrown around, everything inside him screaming danger, danger, danger.

Ping, ping, ping. Darkness, darkness, darkness.

 

——

 

“This is fucking bogus,” Hank grumbles as he enters the Instructor’s room with the others. Williams frowns deeper but doesn’t say anything as he sets his clipboard on the table in front of the tinted plexiglass and types his login on the holographic keyboard next to it.

“It’s what the DPD chair wants, so we’re getting those results,” Hadley says. “Nothing personal against him.”

“Except he’s an android who has shown he’s fully capable of doing what the DPD wants,” Hank argues. “Do none of you see the fuckin’ issue here?”

He holds rank over them, and it gives him a sick sense of power when none of them answer. Williams pulls up Connor’s systems, linked now with the computer, and steps back with the PA microphone in his hand.

“I don’t like it either,” Williams finally says. Hank shoots him an unconvinced look that he doesn’t see. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Hank crosses his arms and watches through Connor’s scrolling idle systems as he stands stiffly in the middle of the street just outside. He’s scanning obsessively, around and behind him and back again, each one coming back negative for a human heat signature. Williams announces the beginning of the test and then crosses his arms as well, watching with a blank look on his face.

Connor takes several steps back, still scanning. Hank can see the hard line of his shoulders through his polo shirt, can see how jumbled his thoughts and processes are as they race down the plexiglass screen. Hank spots movement to the left of the viewing room and straightens, his stomach dropping as a man in full combat gear slinks around Connor’s back.

Another appears from behind one of the houses, coming around the side and the front porch, ahead of Connor. Connor’s systems notice them, and he stops moving, pinging them every two seconds as the men continue to move around him. A third appears down the street, far enough away that Connor’s systems don’t see him yet. But Hank does, and he’s furious.

“The file said three guys, but seriously? All in riot gear?”

“Connor is a prototype android with a crushing capacity well above the force needed to break human bone,” Hadley says. “We thought it prudent to protect the people administering the test.”

“And Connor?” Hank snaps. “Did any of you think to protect him?”

No one says anything. Hank fumes, turning his attention back to Connor, watching as the man behind him gets close enough that his systems can accurately judge his height and weight. He darts forward suddenly, one of his gloved hands aiming at Connor’s ribcage. Connor spins away, his hand shooting out to grab his attacker’s arm. He yanks the man towards him and right into his raised knee - even through the plexiglass Hank can hear him cough and groan at the impact, the sound of his body hitting the blacktop as satisfying as it might have felt for Connor.

After that, the other two attackers give up on trying to sneak up on Connor. Connor takes them down quickly as well, dancing between them when they try and lunge from opposite sides. He pins one’s arm behind him and shoves him to the ground roughly before he glances away the other’s right punch, sliding closer and using the heel of his palm to hit under the man’s chin, sending him sprawling. Connor steps away, back towards the viewing glass, backing up so he’s only feet away from the Instructor’s room.

Hank can see the exact speed his heart is pumping on the glass, his processes a whirlwind of activity as he preconstructs and scans at the same time. He sidesteps the first attacker’s lunge at him, incapacitating him with a kick to his ribs again, the impact loud even with the protective layer of kevlar between Connor’s boot and the human’s flesh. The first attacker doesn’t get up again, but Hank can see he’s still awake, just dazed and tapped out of the fight.

But now Connor has himself backed up completely against the Instructor’s room, with the two remaining combatants framing him in from an angle at his right and left. Connor could slip between them and risk getting snagged, or he could wait for them to get closer and systematically take them down as they struggled in the small space.

Hank bites his lip as Connor decides to wait. He stands with his feet apart and knees bent, scanning and scanning and scanning. Hank wants to yell, wants to scream and pound on the plexiglass wall to get Connor’s attention. He almost gets out his phone and sends a text, but then the leftmost combatant lunges for Connor, arms wide to grapple him as the other moves to slam his head back against the wall.

The plexiglass rattles with Connor’s weight as his back cracks against it. The second attacker moves back, allowing the first to lift Connor off his feet and twist around to pin Connor’s shoulder against the glass. Connor gets his arm between himself and the wall before that happens and shoves, using his own weight against the man holding him. The man stumbles, letting him go, giving Connor enough room to slide back around as the second attacker lunges.

Connor’s scanners stutter to a stop as the man’s fingers tangle in his brown hair and slams his forehead against the glass. The rest of Connor’s systems fizzle out as his temple splits open and thirium splatters across the glass.

“Okay, stop the exam,” Hank snaps. “This is over.”

Williams raises the PA microphone to his mouth. He almost starts to speak when Connor yells and kicks out against the attacker that cracked his head open, tripping him, effectively dislodging his hand from his hair. Connor flips around and clocks the other attacker in the jaw, sending him sprawling to the asphalt, going still as he hits the ground. The other backs off as Connor whips around, panting, wound up to lash out again. Thirium dribbles down the right side of his head and off his chin, hitting the floor with audible drips even through the wall.

Williams announces the end of the test and Hank bursts out of the Instructor’s room. He shoves the door open going into the simulation and reaches for Connor carefully, starting with touching his wrist. Connor jolts and seems to come back to himself, flipping his hand around and gripping Hank’s forearm with a tightness that says he doesn’t trust whoever is in front of him.

“Oh,” Connor breathes. He seems to recognize Hank and relaxes, the tension leaking out of him making him shake. Hank reaches up and pulls the blindfold off, hushing him as Connor hisses in pain as the band of the blindfold slides over his split temple.

“Your LED is broken,” Hank murmurs. Connor nods, a distant, watery look in his eyes. Hank chances a touch over the wound, snapping his hand back when Connor jerks away.

“Come on,” Hank says. He cradles Connor’s elbows and leads him out of the combat room, careful to watch the android’s movements. Connor walks easily, his steps sure even as he glances around to the startled looks on the trainee’s faces. 

Williams approaches them, an apology on his lips. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think they’d push that far. We can get you into repairs -“

“Did I pass?” Connor interrupts.

Williams stops talking. The other two instructors come up beside him, saying nothing. Williams swallows thickly and nods.

“Yeah. You passed.”

Connor nods. He winces at the movement, thirium dripping down his chin onto his shirt. Hank wraps an arm around his waist and glares pointedly at Williams.

Williams shifts his weight and steps to the side. “I’ll lead you to the repair bay,” he says lamely. “We have one for the androids we used to employ here for maintenance.”

Hank rolls his eyes. “Right. Say that again but slower.”

Connor barks a startled laugh. Hank smiles, fear twisting his gut as Connor leans his weight against him.

“Systems are beginning to fail with thirium leakage,” he says, still giggling. Hank hoists him up around the waist and hurries after Williams, unable to say anything.

Connor is placed in stasis as the techs attach him to a thirium bank and begin to remove the plating around his right temple. Hank hovers near the door, fuming, keeping a glare on Williams as the other man fidgets next to him.

“I’ll file assault reports against all three of those trainers,” he says after a while. Hank rolls his eyes again, pushing away from the door jam to avoid staring the other man down.

“You understand why they’re having you do this?” Hank says. A tech replaces the damaged thirium line under Connor’s plating and then covers it with new chassis. She holds an LED up in her hand, a question in her eyes that he nods his assent to.

She presses the LED into Connor’s temple as Williams continues to stand silently. Hank turns to him, finally dragging his eyes away from Connor laying out on the steel table beside him.

Williams finally shakes his head. “They didn’t tell me why,” he says at length. “Just to make it as hard as possible.”

Anger flashes inside Hank, a tight pressure behind his eyes and pressing up his throat. “They did it to stonewall efforts to gain android rights,” Hank snaps. “They did it because  _ he _ turned the tide during the uprising. You think it’s a coincidence Connor is being forced to do this?”

“I had my orders,” Williams argues. “I wasn’t going to risk my job over an android.”

The words ring through the room as the tech snaps the rest of Connor’s chassis shut with a resounding click. Hank can’t bring himself to respond, so be focuses on Connor as the tech brings him out of stasis. Hank watches as Connor glances at Williams warily before touching his temple, LED spinning yellow.

“You can send the completed exam documents to precinct 9667,” Hank says. He pointedly doesn’t look at Williams as he helps Connor stand. “I’ll be filing my own assault complaints later. Among others.”

Williams makes an acknowledging noise in his throat. “Right. Of course.”

Hank ignores him after that. Connor obeys the tech when she asks to run a full system diagnostic, smiling a little when the tech approves it and sends them on their way. Hank leads Connor to the locker room for him to change, guarding the door, and gives back Connor’s wallet and badge when he reemerges. 

“You okay?” Hank asks quietly. Connor nods, his expression unreadable.

Hank grimaces and draws Connor close. Connor melts against him, something in his face breaking. Hank brushes his lips across Connor’s temple as Connor winds his arms around his shoulders.

“When they broke my sensor, everything went dark,” Connor says shakily. “I couldn’t see and I couldn’t determine how far away they were. It was like being cut off from the network all over again, except worse, and I couldn’t bring it  _ back _ , Hank.”

Hank kisses him over his red LED. The sound of Connor’s strained voice pulls at his heartstrings, and even though anyone could walk in right now, he doesn’t care. He brings Connor against him properly and pulls the android’s head down so his face is cradled into Hank’s neck.

“You’re okay,” Hank murmurs. He smooths his palms up Connor’s back, feeling him take in a shuddering breath. “You’re okay, and it’s over, and you passed, Connor. You passed.”

Connor nods. “I passed,” he says. 

“You passed.”

Connor takes a calming breath before turning and pressing a warm kiss against Hank’s beard. Hank lets him go after that, letting Connor set the pace as they escape out into the warming afternoon.

Connor collapses into the passenger seat and doesn’t move until the Academy is far behind them. He reaches across and turns down the radio, his hand finding Hank’s in the same motion.

“Feel any better?” Hank asks.

He catches Connor’s smile out the corner of his eye. “Yes,” Connor says quietly. “Thank you, Hank.”

Hank shrugs. It’s easier to breath now that the Academy is far away, now that that stupid combat room is just a memory and nothing more. Now it’s just the two of them, Connor rattled but here, his palm warm against Hank’s and his smile small but easy.

Hank soaks it in and brushes his lips across the back of Connor’s hand. Connor returns the gesture, his breath warm across Hank’s skin.

“Did you tell them to replace my LED?” Connor says after a while. His palm is still pressed against Hank’s, his other hand playing with their intertwined fingers.

Hank feels his mouth pitch into a frown. “Should I have said no? You can take it out, right?”

“No, no,” Connor says quickly. “No, I wanted to thank you. I don’t want to get rid of it.”

Hank relaxes and gives him a sly look. “You’re an odd one, Connor,” he says, a laugh in his voice.

“Yes,” Connor agrees. “I am.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really need to learn how to chop this fic up lol. i apologize for the uneven chapters!
> 
> also thank you for all the comments and well wishes for my birthday! the last couple days have been really stressful for me so I apologize if i havent replied to your comments. but i do see them, and i love each and every one of you <3 youre all a gift!

The universe decides to give them a break after the Academy. 

Well, either that or Hank’s tripping. He’s pretty sure it’s the former. He _hopes_ it's the former.

Connor passes the written test while disconnected from the ‘net with flying colors. He’s given a gold-embossed certificate with his name on it in a heavy frame - a gift from the guys at the precinct. Connor accepts it gracefully, setting it against the back glass wall of their shared desks; he looks put together, but Hank can see the sheen of tears in his eyes that he fights to keep down.

Even Gavin is there, surprisingly. Hank pretends not to notice the nod he gives Connor when the android turns a sunny smile on him.

Hank still doesn’t trust him. Old habits die hard, he guesses.

They’re given their next load of cases the same time Diana’s interview from the previous week comes out. Thankfully, she focused a lot on Markus and his entourage - not so thankfully, she does include a full shot of all of them sitting together in Carl’s studio, with Hank’s hand plainly curled around Connor’s knee.

He waits all morning for Fowler to come tearing through the bullpen to give him an earful about their (admittedly slack) fraternization rules. It wasn’t a secret Hank cared for Connor, especially given their recent case, but they also made a point of keeping a respectful distance from each other. Connor addressed him by his rank at work, and while he fetched Hank coffee and lunch without being asked, and sometimes sat a little too close and casual while they shared space reviewing case documents, their relationship was a well-kept secret. Ben and Chris had no interest in outing them, and Connor was content to let things lay slack at work if it meant no one bothered them.

But Fowler never came. The interview aired without incident, a comfortable buzz of background noise as people tuned in at the precinct. Sure, eyes followed them for the rest of the day. People asked questions and were more friendly towards Connor than normal.

But nothing bad happened. Nothing blew up and no one came barreling through the office spitting nonsense at Connor.

Quite the opposite, actually. Hank makes a mental note to start keeping track of how the universe keeps surprising him.

“So was it scary meeting Markus?” an officer quips. Connor cranes his neck around the dead body between them, briefly catching Hank’s eyes across the room before settling back on their curious coworker.

“No,” Connor says slowly. “I was more afraid of realizing I was deviant, I guess. And that I’d led the FBI and army to Jericho.”

The officer hums. Connor quirks a brow and circles the room, taking in the mess the intruder made of the victim’s living room and dining room before returning to Hank’s side. His LED blinks yellow, a pinpoint of light in the flood of brightness from the lights forensics brought in an hour earlier. His eyes are wary as they scan across the body of the human male sprawled across the carpet in the living room, their usual warm brown dark with something Hank can’t place.

Hank tips his head, silently questioning, catching his partner’s stare as it finally settles on him. Connor shakes his head.

“I was scared of Markus,” Chris cuts in. Hank snorts and Chris shoots him an amused look, his smile toothy, breaking the tension clinging to the room.

“I’m serious,” he continues. “That was a scary night for me.”

“Imagine how all those androids felt,” Hank shoots back. “You’re lucky you didn’t kill any of those androids. I think he would have been a little scarier if you had.”

“Yeah, Frank was terrified. Poor guy fired without thinking and he’s  _ still  _ super torn up about it.”

“That was months ago,” Connor says. 

Chris makes a noncommittal noise and shrugs. “But they’re still people he killed. He didn’t think so at the time, but being held at gunpoint by  _ the actual Markus _ \- the leader of the deviants - kind of changed his mind.”

Connor tips his head, LED spinning quickly, only cycling to blue when he catches Hank’s curious stare. Hank elbows him good naturedly and brushes their hands together when no one’s looking. “It’s alright, Connor.”

“Yeah, it’s all good,” the other officer says. “I was mostly curious because Markus didn’t seem like the monster the government said he was.”

“A lot of information got skewed that night,” Hank says. “We were all wrong about who was the menace to society.”

Connor splits away, stepping down the dark hallway, carefully avoiding the broken glass on the carpet from the shattered light in the ceiling. Hank watches him disappear around the corner into the bedroom before turning back to Chris and the other officers beginning to congregate in the living room.

“Connor isn’t a menace, is he?” he continues. “I mean, he was practically enemy number one after he dragged all those androids out into the open. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t have his reasons - and obviously Markus had his.”

“Well, no,” the officer says. “I know that. I just meant because Markus was the leader if it was scary to meet him. Y’know, kinda like meeting the president or something.”

“I still think she was in on it the whole time,” Chris says warily. “She still has ties to Cyberlife.”

“Then let’s hope that people like Diana keep making these think pieces for the rest of us to get a look at the truth. God knows the world needs a bit more of that right now,” Hank says.

Even though Diana  _ seriously _ made him uncomfortable. She probed into places he could tell made even Markus nervous. She asked the questions people needed to hear, sure, but at the end of the day she still rubbed him the wrong way.

Connor reappears around the corner, his steps quiet on the plush carpet. His eyes reflect the light like a cat’s would in a low light room, a red and green reflection from his optical sensors that are bright in the dark of the hallway. It’s an eerie look on him that disappears as Connor steps into the floodlights in the living room.

“Find anything?” Hank prompts.

Connor grimaces. “I’m not sure. Everything about this says break-in turned bad, but there is evidence of a sexual assault in the bedroom.”

Chris perks up from the other side of the couch, and Hank turns to follow Connor into the bedroom he emerged from earlier. Connor shines a blacklight across the bedspread, revealing light purple splotches along with darker ones splattered up onto the headboard.

“Thirium,” Connor says. “Along with thirium-derived lubricant and human blood.”

Hank switches out his nitrile gloves for fresh ones and takes the blacklight. He scans it across the bed, then down to the floor, where he finds footprints that weren‘t there before, the carpet stiff with invisible blue blood.

“So the android walked away?” Chris asks. “That’s thirium, right?”

Connor nods. “Yes. While records show an android lived here, there is no evidence of where it went or if it had a hand in this. It may have turned deviant and left here during the uprising.”

“So is this a break-in or an internal struggle that turned sour?” Hank says. “Because right now this is starting to look like a human-android relationship that ended badly.”

Connor shrugs. His expression is carefully blank, but Hank can see the tightness around his mouth and eyes. Hank cups his elbow and hands back the blacklight, making sure Connor catches his eyes.

“C’mon, let’s let forensics process all this,” Hank says softly. 

Connor’s stare stays fixed to the bed. That faraway look is back, with something in his expression twisting just enough for Hank to recognize the pain there. It takes everything Hank has not to hug him - instead he gently pushes Connor out of the apartment and into the equally crowded hallway.

“We should question the neighbors,” Connor starts.

“Let Ben do it,” Hank says. He manages to get Connor into the elevator before he wraps an arm around the android’s hips, tugging him close.

Connor, for all his self confidence and assuredness at a crime scene, melts into the contact. They’re more than ten floors up, and the elevator isn’t quick - they both take advantage of the moment and embrace fully, Connor’s head dropping to Hank’s shoulders as his fingers curl tightly into the back of Hank’s jacket.

“The android was sexually assaulted,” Connor says, strained, his voice muffled against the fabric of Hank’s coat. “I don’t think this was a robbery, Hank. I think he and his human partner got into an argument, and -“

“Shh,” Hank soothes. The elevator dings with their arrival to the first floor and they separate, Hank’s hand cradled around Connor’s waist the only point of contact between them. Connor looks absolutely devastated at the loss, but Hank steers him quickly out to the cruiser, thankful, at least, that it has tinted windows all around.

“Let’s hand this off to Ben,” Hank continues once they’re in the car. Connor shoots him an unconvinced look.

“I can still do this, Lieutenant,” Connor says pointedly.

The title hurts - a jab meant to drive too close to home - but he takes it in stride and lets Connor have this one. “Alright. But let's get some rest before tomorrow. I think you need a break.”

Connor reluctantly agrees. He settles back in his seat and doesn’t fidget or move on the drive home, uncharacteristically silent as well. Hank doesn’t disturb him further and turns the radio down, the chatter of dispatch and whatever talk show humming through the speakers falling away into the gentle thrum of the car engine under them.

He doesn’t know why this is suddenly bothering Connor so much, even though he understands, deep down, that Connor is still afraid. He struggles with his deviancy constantly even with the great strides he makes daily, and with the added stress of new cases landing on their desks almost every day, it was a wonder he managed to keep it together in the first place. Connor was built for this, but he also wasn’t just a machine anymore. Emotion played a much bigger hand in his thoughts and reactions than he was ever meant to process.

That train of thought leads to an idle wondering if Connor can still self destruct - if he would fall into a depression just like humans can and just decide to end it all. Connor wouldn’t, not over one case, but Hank shoves the thought away all the same.

Connor was strong. He was intelligent and bull-headed and so, so compassionate, and Hank will not allow this to affect him like all of the cases before affected Hank. Depression and everything else that came with it was a heavy enough weight. He was determined not to allow Connor to carry it either.

So he pushes Connor to take a hot shower and put on some comfortable clothes, then turns up the thermostat so the house is cozy when he tugs Connor against his side on the couch. He wraps the both of them up in a heavy throw blanket and doesn’t fuss when Sumo wants to curl at Connor’s feet, instead kissing Connor’s hair when the android finally relaxes against him with his head tucked under Hank’s chin. It’s not a conversation that they should probably have for Connor’s sake, but by the time Hank admonishes himself for it, Connor is too warm and relaxed for him to care.

So he takes this small victory and tucks it away. It’s the least he could do, after all - from one survivor to another. It’s the least he could do.

 

——

 

The station is abuzz with activity when they return the next day, except in all the wrong ways. 

Reporters throng in the main entrance, vying for attention as Hank shields Connor from the worst of the questions slung at him. He catches his name and  _ detective _ and  _ how does this kind of vandalism make you feel?  _ before Hank steers them through the glass entry gate with little more than a perfunctory shove. Connor is stronger and sturdier than that, but be allows himself to be pushed, only going far enough that Hank’s hand doesn’t truly leave them.

The bullpen isn’t much better. Officers and forensic photographers circle the far side of the room, their bodies blocking off the worst of whatever is causing this amount of activity. Connor feels the briefest amount of dread settle into his nonexistent stomach as he and Hank round the corner of the first row of desks.

Fowler stops them before they can get any closer to the activity. He places a careful hand on Connor’s arm, his palm big and warm, not unlike Hank’s hand settled across the small of his back. He turns a confused look on their Captain, a million thoughts racing through his processors, all of them screaming for him to search, investigate,  _ understand.  _

Fowler beats him to it. “Someone smashed your desk and Anderson’s,” he says shortly.

Hank hisses a curse at Connor’s side. Connor feels his face twist into further confusion, something like fear settling across his ribs.

“When?” he asks. “Why?”

The dull chatter of the journalists just outside the open bullpen doesn’t drown out Fowler’s defeated tone. “Because of you and Hank, Connor. I think we need to talk.”

Connor follows him stiffly into his office, Hank close on his heels. Hank looks angry when the door finally closes behind him and Fowler fogs the glass with a press of a button on his terminal. Connor recognizes that anger - has had it turned on him more than once before his deviancy - but even having it pointed elsewhere makes him uneasy. He wants to soothe that anger, wants to calm Hank’s rage even as his insides twist in fear.

“There’s no easy way to go about this,” Fowler starts. “But I do want to apologize. A lot has happened since that interview aired yesterday and while I had an idea, I don’t hold any judgement against you.”

“This better not be what I think it is,” Hank says, a note of warning in his voice. “Jeffrey -“

“I’m assigning you both new partners,” Fowler interrupts. Connor’s heart sinks to his feet, suddenly feeling dizzy. “It’s temporary. I promise you that. But with what just happened, I think it prudent.”

“The  _ fuck _ you mean it’s  _ prudent?!” _ Hank snaps. He gestures between himself and Connor, his face a blotchy red as his fury rises. “We don’t even know what happened and we’re already being punished!”

“I don’t like it either! Jesus, Hank, this is hard enough as it is.”

Hank snorts and starts tugging off his badge and gun holster. “This is a fucking joke. I’m not doing this.”

Realization dawns on Connor. His eyes flick up to Fowler’s, catching his pained gaze as it drifts between Hank and Connor.

“You found out,” Connor says quietly. “So did someone else. They smashed our desks when we weren’t here when they put two and two together.”

Fowler’s expression is resigned. He looks tired, the age lines across his face finally betraying his age. “I don’t care about your relationship, Connor. Honestly, since Hank has been in such a good mood and been much more himself in the field, I really don’t want to break it up here at work. But not everyone is convinced.”

Connor’s stare drifts to where he can faintly see figures crowding around where their desks should be outside Fowler’s office. Someone must have seen the interview and figured Hank’s closeness was what it appeared to be - or they were  _ that _ furiously opposed to an android working for the DPD. Connor had gained infamy for his infiltration of Cyberlife, but the commotion had died down, and he figured people wouldn’t be as angry at him over it as they had been. Obviously he was wrong, but to be separated from Hank over this? 

No. His heart clenches painfully at the thought, even though their separation is strictly work-related. Fowler wasn’t asking them to terminate their relationship - wasn’t even asking if they lived together, though he was beyond smart enough to deduce that. It was just for work. For safety; a precaution in the event this turns into more of a hate crime.

He still hates it. Judging by Hank’s muttered cursing, his partner does too.

He hears Hank slam his badge and gun on Fowler’s desk, jumping from the noise, attention drawn back to his partner beside him. He stares dumbly as Fowler blinks, something like anger clouding his eyes that he barely stamps down before Connor can analyze it any further.

“You are not quitting, Anderson,” Fowler hisses.

“Like hell I’m being cowed into submission by some prejudiced lunatics,” Hank spits back. He turns to Connor, his expression softening - though not by much. “I’ll meet you at the car.”

It’s uncharacteristically like Hank to leave Connor alone while tensions are so high, but Connor doesn’t follow him as his partner slams the door to Fowler’s office and disappears behind the foggy glass. Connor shifts his gaze to Fowler, his chest and stomach tightening, every single piece of his chassis feeling like it’s on fire now that he’s alone with their Captain.

“I’ll give these back,” he starts, quietly. He takes Hank’s badge and gun slowly, wary.

Fowler just sighs. “You’re being paired with Gavin for now. Hank’s with Ben. He’s still on homicide, but you’re on assault and battery while I try and figure this out.”

Connor swallows thickly. “Yes,” he says, and his voice feels crackly and far away. Working with Reed? Their relationship wasn’t as hostile as before, but Gavin was still  _ Gavin.  _ “Yes, of course.”

“And tell him I’m sorry,” Fowler says quickly before Connor can escape. “I'm sorry to you, too. I’ll get you two back on track. I will.”

Connor nods. He knows his LED is red the entire walk through the bullpen because of the startled eyes that follow him, some familiar and concerned, others strangers that he doesn’t bother acknowledging. He makes it to where Hank parked the cruiser in the parking structure and nearly collapses against his partner as soon as Hank turns around.

“You brought this shit back?” Hank says. He takes his badge and gun with a sour twist to his face, his blue eyes searching. Connor can barely manage a nod as his throat closes up. Hank’s face softens and he pockets both items before curling his hands around Connor’s wrists. “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that, or left you there. I was just so fucking  _ pissed  _ -“

“I’m partnered with Reed.”

Connor’s strained, static-y voice startles Hank into silence. They stare at each other, Hank dumbfounded and Connor feeling like he might explode before Hank manages to muster enough wits to respond.

“He won’t do anything,” Hank says at length. His tone is placating, but Connor recognizes a faint note of anger there. “Gavin is a lot of things, but after everything, he’ll throw a fit and then be fine.”

Connor shakes his head. “Why is it such a big deal?” he asks quietly. “Why is a human-android partnership so bad?”

“Oh, Connor,” Hank whispers. He draws the android against him properly, his hands skipping up Connor’s arms and around his back to hug him. Connor clings to him, scanning his heartbeat obsessively, using Hank’s warmth and heart to soothe himself. It barely keeps the panicked anger from boiling over as Hank turns his head to murmur into his hair.

“It’s just new humans, same shit,” Hank says. “We aren’t rational creatures like you. It doesn’t matter if what they saw was romantic or not - they saw a human organization, a  _ police department _ , willingly supporting the android uprising. That’s all they saw. Me, a police Lieutenant, a representative of the DPD, on the side of the evil robots.”

Connor can’t speak. He nods anyway, the words making sense but everything else processing in a blur. He wants Hank to wear the interface again, wants for him to understand without words this pressure building in his chest and throat. Wants him to see how his vision fills with software instability after software instability, wants Hank to just  _ know - _

“Okay,” Hank murmurs. Connor doesn’t understand what he means until Hank’s palm flattens against his own, and oh, he tried interfacing without realizing it. He pulls back enough from where he had his face pressed into Hank’s jacket to see his palm, stark white chassis bared against Hank’s rough hand. Their fingers are splayed out together, and Connor can feel the hum of his systems trying to push information across a connection that isn’t there.

But Hank understands. He drives them home, and urges Connor to relax back in bed as he puts on the interface. It’s only the second time he’s worn it and he’s clumsy at letting Connor in, reluctance and fear stuttering across their connection before anything real is established.

And then Hank is there - hot, bright, and confusing. Connor can’t make heads or tails of what Hank is, can’t understand what a being like Hank is without coding to sift through for him to truly understand, but he doesn’t need to. He feels a heart fluttering in his chest - a  _ real _ heart, made from strong muscle and beating so sure and heavy. He feels hot blood pumping through his cold veins and a hand that’s tougher than his own skidding up his side to curl around his back. He feels warm breath passing through his nose and hair longer than his own and he feels hot and scared and concerned and so much  _ love  _ that he barely has the sense of mind to shut down non-essential systems before it all becomes too much.

Hank chuckles against his cheek as they curl closer together, palms still pressed against each other as he maneuvers Connor back into bed. Connor lets himself be calmed, lets Hank pry through his systems and processes, quieting each one as they flurry in his panic. He doesn’t know how Hank knows to do that, then blearily realizes that whatever Connor understands, Hank understands. It’s an unfair advantage since Connor can’t just turn parts of Hank off, but it’s also strangely liberating, so he lets Hank manipulate him. Not anything too sensitive, but Hank knows where to soothe, knows where to press and massage to calm him down.

It’s more than enough, then. He settles across Hank’s stomach, their hands tangled together across his chest as Connor nuzzles under Hank’s chin. Stasis comes to him without him realizing it; then, through the fog of everything inside him shutting down into peaceful quiet, understands that Hank tugged the command forward for him. He allows all his feelings to pulse through their connection then - peace, love, and gratitude - and then everything goes blissfully dark.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again, i love every single one of you. your comments give me life, and i hope my fic continues to entertain! i <3 you all!

Instead of splitting off with Hank after the morning debrief the next day, Connor falls into step with Reed as the other detective makes for his cruiser. Connor had downloaded his case files on the drive over - he was currently working a rape case at the nearby college, with a victim that had previously lied about the first encounter with her rapist - so neither of them wasted time reviewing evidence before leaving the precinct.

Connor was still hesitant, though. Being separated from Hank was like suffering from a partial shutdown of his proximity sensors, a blind spot in his peripheral that his systems can’t make up for. The feeling increases exponentially when he steps away from his brand new desk - both his and Hank’s free of all their belongings except new terminals - to follow his new partner outside.

“You alright?” Reed says after a bit once they’re on their way to the local university. Connor turns a wary stare on his new partner but doesn’t let any more of his confusion bleed into his expression; Gavin doesn’t seem to notice, his attention on the road.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Connor says. 

Reed makes a gesture out to the road, his face pinching. “I don’t know. Maybe because all your shit got destroyed? What do you think?”

“Oh.” 

Connor works over his answer. He debates not saying much at all, mostly because he has no real interest in getting close to Reed. Getting friendly was just a little too close to forgiveness, and while he understood people changed, Reed was one of the few humans in Connor’s life that he truly didn’t feel deserved that chance.

But if they’re going to be partners, then being obstinate and refusing to gel wasn’t an option. He shifts in his seat, fighting the urge to fidget, and looks out the window.

“It’s - substantially more upsetting than I thought it would be,” Connor allows. “Very little bothers me, but having what few belongings I have destroyed along with the Lieutenant’s… hurts. For lack of a better term.”

He can feel Reed’s stare boring holes in the side of his head before he looks away. “We’ll get replacements,” Reed says after a moment. 

Connor doesn’t want to talk about this anymore. Hank hadn’t been upset about  _ his _ stuff getting smashed - besides maybe the photo of himself and his fellow officers during the red ice bust several years prior. He’d been furious about Connor’s things, though, and still muttered about it on their drive to the precinct. It instilled in Connor a sense of loss that was far greater than what a certificate of completion and a name plate should have instilled, and it made him uncomfortable to think that others knew how it made him feel.

Especially Reed. Just one more vulnerability out there for the trigger happy detective to exploit - he was determined not to show it again.

Reed doesn’t comment on his abrupt silence, which Connor is grateful for. They make it to Wayne State University, an old public university close to Detroit’s public center, and check themselves in before being escorted to the victim’s dorm with university police.

Connor is used to drawing all sorts of attention, even more so now that he’s a publicly known deviant. But the eyes that slide over him are still unsettling as he and Reed follow their escort, too many stares picking out his LED from far away and venturing closer to see what model android he is. He hasn’t worn his Cyberlife jacket since the day Hank brought him home, but still he feels hot stares trying to look for any sort of identification on his back and shoulder. He angles himself behind Reed and wishes desperately that Hank were here to protect him.

But he’s not. His heart clenches painfully, and he pushes forward, willing himself to focus.

Their escort takes them to the sixth floor of the on-campus female dorms. The hallways are wide and each apartment is given ample space between each other, their doors spaced unevenly in a likely shifting floor pattern for each one. They’re taken to dorm number 515, a whiteboard with the names “Chrissy” and “Alaia” written in red marker hung on a nail on the door. Reed knocks, and after a few moments, a young woman with long, dark, curly hair answers the door.

“Oh,” she says, startled. Her blue eyes are nearly grey with how light they are, an almost unnatural color in the artificial warm light of the hallway. If Connor didn’t know any better - or if his scans didn’t come back positive with a fluttering human heartbeat - he would have almost mistaken her for an android.

“I’m Detective Gavin Reed,” Gavin says. His voice is surprisingly gentle for a man who regularly bullies people around, but Connor makes no comment about it. Reed shifts slightly to the side and gestures to Connor, and the woman’s eyes track to him. “This is Detective Connor. Are you Alaia?”

The woman nods. “Yeah. Sorry. Come in.” 

She steps away to allow them into her dorm. Reed follows her further inside while Connor catalogues the room, his neck craning to the side so as not to hit the hanging paper stars as he moves after them a bit more slowly. 

The dorm is dimly lit compared to the hallway, with paper lights strung across pins holding posters of television shows and models to the wall. There’s a paper calendar nailed to the back of the door and numerous magazine cutouts of ballet dancers, movie ticket stubs, and various other paper collections on a corkboard above one of the desks shoved along one wall. Each desk has an idling laptop along with books, papers, a set of speakers, and an eclectic spread of things people tend to collect for their private spaces. Connor scans each one, noting a large amount of horse-themed items along one desk and bed, before turning his attention back to the occupants of the room.

The first woman - Alaia - sits down on her bed, pulling up her legs under her before nervously placing a pillow in her lap. It’s decorated with sequins, and as she moves her palms across it, different colors shimmer along the surface. The other woman - whom Connor assumes is Chrissy - sits on her bed on the other side of the room, significantly more nervous and stressed, her heartbeat too quick for her to be anyone else but their victim.

Connor immediately softens his face and tries to slouch his posture to feel less threatening to her. Her green eyes are trained him, staring uncomfortably, flicking between his face and his LED. Alaia’s are, too, but while she is fidgeting, her roommate is significantly more still.

“My name is Connor,” Connor says. “I’m a Detective with the Detroit Police. May I ask your name?”

Chrissy seems to come back to herself and straightens up against her pillows. “Uh, Chrissy,” she confirms. Her eyes stay glued to his right temple. “Uh. Is he …?”

She looks at Reed. Connor feels an irrational streak of anger rise up his throat before Reed nods, something similar to his own fuming anger wrinkling around the human detective’s eyes.

“Yeah, he’s an android. And yeah, he’s deviant,” Reed says.

“That’s really rude, Chrissy,” Alaia hisses. 

“But he’s an  _ android!” _

“I am,” Connor cuts in, his tone clipped. “I would appreciate it if we moved on from this topic of conversation and got to the reason we came here.”

“Easy,” Reed murmurs, but there’s no heat to his voice. There’s a slight smile on his face when Connor turns to catch his expression, and Connor tries not to feel satisfied that he’s earned Reed’s approval.

“I’m sorry,” Alaia says. She gets up and sits next to her roommate on the other bed, clasping the other woman’s hands between her own as she pins her with a pointed look. “She’s just scared. A lot has happened these past couple days.”

Connor relents. He read the case file on the drive over - Chrissy (twenty-two years old, a freshman, moved her from New York because her parents wouldn’t support her financially anymore) had been sexually assaulted here in her dorm by a friend after she had invited him over. Her statement fell apart a couple days later when her attacker - Dayton Paul, twenty-three, also a freshman and native to Detroit - had been expelled from school and her resolve broke over her feelings for him. Apparently they had dated in high school, and while there were lingering feelings, Connor still doesn’t understand why she would let him into her dorm the second time.

Because she had - to “talk”. To try and smooth things over. It ended much the same way the first assault did, and now that Dayton had been expelled, this had been passed from university police to the Detroit police.

How in the world  _ Reed _ got assigned this, Connor still isn’t sure. He doesn’t let his confusion show as he takes a slow step closer to the two women and tilts his head, his tone soft.

“I understand that what happened to you is traumatic,” he says. “But if you could tell us whatever you remember in chronological order leading up to the second assault, that would help us greatly.”

Because whether or not Dayton  _ did _ assault her was already moot. The rape kit from both assaults was positive for his semen and DNA, and while Connor was confident the DA could run with it in court, this was still the twenty-first century. Not much progress on the attitude surrounding rape had been made, so clearing up events leading up to Chrissy’s assault would help her case.

She reluctantly opens up, and admits she let Dayton in. He had been angry, but not physical, and while she initially didn’t want to talk, she allowed it to keep more bad blood from forming between them. A mistake, but Connor can’t fault her on that - the big, fat tears rolling down her cheeks is enough for Connor to back off and let her explain in full detail without interruption.

Reed takes notes in a small notebook he produces from his jacket pocket, surprisingly understanding and attentive. His voice is quiet when he asks questions and he doesn’t accuse her of allowing this to happen to her when she expresses remorse. Instead he consoles her, gentle in a way Connor has never seen him be with anyone else, android or otherwise.

It drives a sickly knife of anger through Connor’s gut. He’s only known pain and ridicule from this man - has even had his gun pressed to his forehead more than once, and his tight palm around his throat. Connor can still feel the painful crunch of his chassis under Reed’s hand, the memory coming forward in his mind unbidden. A hot pressure builds in his chest, uncomfortable even as his diagnostics come back with a steady core temperature of seventy-three point three degrees. It all feels so suddenly  _ wrong _ that he can barely stand being in the same room as Reed.

Thankfully, Chrissy explains rather quickly. She and Alaia sign a witness disclosure with a written copy of their explanation of events and Alaia shows them out, her expression apologetic as she stares at the right side of Connor’s face. Reed snaps his notebook closed and falls into pace with the university police that had been waiting outside the dorm. Connor reluctantly falls into step beside him.

“Yellow light,” Reed says after they step outside the main dorm building. Connor turns a confused look on his partner, raising a brow.

Reed pokes his own temple with a slightly amused quirk of his mouth. “Kinda a dead give away. It’s been yellow since Chrissy started talking.”

Connor recognizes this as an attempt at conversation and blinks, even more confused. Reed  _ hates  _ him. He may have apologized, but hatred for androids like Reed’s calibre doesn’t just disappear like that. Even Hank still sometimes struggled to overcome old habits - Connor couldn’t expect Reed to be any different.

But Reed seems intent on flipping Connor’s opinion of him on a head at every chance he gets. He frowns, his eyes more pointed.

“Red light,” Reed warns, and Connor purposefully steps around him to walk on his other side so he can’t see the right side of his face. 

Maybe he should have gotten it removed. It seems to do nothing but cause trouble lately.

Reed takes them to their next interview, a condo in upscale Detroit with a view similar to the one Daniel’s family had all that time ago: a terrace overlooking central Detroit, a pool covered with a tight tarp taking up most of the massive overlook while a large wall of windows lets in the grey mid-morning light, soaking everything in the crisp living room in a somber mood. Dayton’s mother lets them sit on the couch, but her uneasy stare never leaves Connor. Dayton’s father is a bit more vocal about his displeasure.

“You can leave your android outside,” he says. Facial scans reveal no criminal record, but they do reveal his name - Erik Paul, Senior. Connor levels him with a cool look that betrays nothing. 

“Yeah, well, he’s my partner, so I’d appreciate it if we could continue with our questions,” Reed says, annoyed.

“I told you everything,” Dayton says. He’s sitting next to his mother, curled up on the cushions as if he weren’t being questioned by the police and instead decided to sit in for the day and watch a movie. Connor hates the dark look in his eyes, hates the way they linger too long on his face and hands - he has nowhere to hide, so he pointedly doesn’t stare back even as his processes twist in sickly anxiety.

Dayton’s mother hushes him. “What he means,” she says, “is he told the truth. That girl let him in, and she asked for sex. He just gave her what she wanted, just like the first time.”

“There were multiple witnesses afterwards that all say Chrissy was in shock after he left,” Reed counters. “You expect us to believe that was post-coital bliss? We aren’t that stupid.”

“Her rape kits also indicated vaginal trauma,” Connor says. Now he does pin Dayton with a stare, narrowing his eyes in accusation even as he keeps his tone level. “Very little could cause the abrasions she has if it wasn’t forced intercourse.”

“She could have done it herself,” Erik says flippantly. “Now will you please take this hunk of metal outside so we can talk?”

Reed turns a hot look on Erik. “You mind not calling him that? I believe he introduced himself.”

“I don’t care. I want it out of my house.”

Connor gets up. Reed does as well, the familiar crinkle of anger around his eyes and mouth a dead giveaway even as he tries to part amicably. Connor shakes his head, catching Reed’s eyes, willing his burning throat to open up so he can speak even as shame washes down his spine.

“I’ll be outside,” Connor says. Reed’s mouth drops open in surprise, but he nods anyway, reluctantly sitting back down.

Connor turns and marches out into the hallway. His chest feels tight and heavy, like every piece of his chassis is too small to contain all his processors and biocomponents. He blearily recognizes the onset of a panic attack as everything comes rushing to him at once, his senses suddenly mounting on him like he’s experiencing everything for the very first time.

He can hear the rush of water through the pipes in the wall and an argument break out between Dayton’s mother and father as Reed presses for answers. He can feel all the pieces of his body clicking into place, too aware, too uncomfortable, his background scans suddenly too loud in the back of his mind. A rush of sound and static fills his skull and he collapses back against the wall and slides down, pressing his face between his drawn-up knees, willing the world to just  _ shut up _ before his body shakes itself apart.

It’s a human way of calming down, so naturally it does nothing to help him. His processors scramble to find a way to soothe, his hands beginning to tremble as they slick back against his hair. Why was this suddenly an issue? He’d dealt with anti-android sentiments before now. This shouldn’t have been any different. Why was this effecting him so profoundly after months of surviving through it already?

Somehow, he ends up pulling Hank’s phone number to the forefront of his mind and hovers over the command to call him. Hank’s photo sits next to his contact information - a candid that he captured one slow morning when the sun had peeked through the blinds just right, a ring of golden light lining Hank’s hair and shoulder in a way that made him look fifteen years younger. Connor enjoyed Hank’s face, loved the lines crossing his face when he smiled or frowned, loved seeing the passage of time warp a face as expressive as Hank’s. But that moment had been infinitesimally small and significant, a moment that showed Connor a part of Hank that  _ Hank _ probably didn’t think about anymore.

The thought soothes him. He calls Hank anyway, pushing back the guilt and anxiety, and runs on a strange, comfortable high as the line rings and rings and his body starts to relax.

_ “Connor?”  _ Hank’s voice buzzes over the line. It’s so much closer than it would be if Connor were using a phone - it’s like Hank is sitting right inside his mind, not interface-close, but near enough Connor feels there’s little difference. Connor melts against the wall, his head hitting the sheetrock with a dull thud.

Hank calls his name again, voice mounting in concern. Connor smiles, swallowing an unnecessary breath before speaking.

“I’m sorry if you’re busy,” he says. “I - I just needed to hear your voice.”

Hank snorts. There’s a light shuffling and then Hank’s voice is lower, deeper in a way that sends a jolt of heat down Connor’s ribs.  _ “Ben can handle this for now. Not like the body is going anywhere.” _

“Still.”

_ “Connor, I said it’s fine,”  _ Hank chatises.  _ “Now tell me what the real problem is.” _

Connor swallows thickly. His heart picks up speed, a nervous reaction that does nothing but bring heat from his core to the surface of his skin faster than normal. He wants Hank to feel this heat, wants his rough palms over his hips and back, wants to feel that comfort of intimacy so badly his body vibrates with it. 

_ “Connor,” _ Hank says again, and Connor rips his mind away from the thought of Hank touching him. His body still feels hot and tight, but he focuses again on the moment, dragging his attention to the present.

“Do you think I have separation anxiety?” Connor murmurs.

Hank makes a noise in his throat. Connor can almost see him shrugging.  _ “I don’t know. Is that why you called?” _

“I,” Connor starts, then stops. He thinks back to Dayton and his parents, then to Chrissy, then to the crowds of students thronging closer to get a better look at him as they crossed campus. All of them had been urging to see him up close, curious and accusing, eyes sliding over him like he was an exhibit to process and then toss aside. Connor swallows his anxiety again and shakes his head, thinking of Hank. “I guess I got scared. I’ve been getting stares.”

Hank knows what that means. He knows the connotation attached to it, knows Connor really means people won’t stop treating him like a  _ thing  _ instead of a person. He growls, deep and angry, a sound that fills Connor with comfort.

_ “Is it Reed, too?” _

Connor frowns. “No. He’s been defending me, surprisingly. Though he keeps pointing out my LED color.”

_ “Should I come get you?” _

“No. I just - I needed to hear your voice. I think I was close to a panic attack.”

Even though his systems come back nominal. There is no diagnostic for  _ panic attack _ , Cyberlife having little need to program their androids to have on if they truly believed their androids weren’t sapient. So he has very little basis to go on except for what he feels, and it’s strange enough to base his conclusions on an instinct he didn’t know he had in the first place.

Hank continues to fume.  _ “Connor, it’s not a problem. If you’re upset I’ll be there. My voice isn’t that great anyway.” _

Connor smiles despite himself. “I enjoy it, Lieutenant.”

The title and Connor’s low voice catches Hank off guard.  _ “Watch it, Connor.” _

He can hear a note of arousal in Hank’s tone, and that sends another shudder of pleasure through Connor. The urge to feel the other man’s hands around him and inside him comes back, and he recalls the memory of his thick fingers working him open, so gentle and sure that Connor has to stifle a shaky sigh before he can stop himself.

Hank hears it anyway.  _ “I seriously hope you didn’t call me to get off on just my voice,”  _ he says, strained.

Connor sighs a laugh. “No. I’m sorry. I can let you go.”

Hank seems to think for a moment before coming to his own conclusion.  _ “Just a couple more hours, okay?”  _ he says, voice low and intimate.  _ “And then I’ll pick you up and take you home. Day’s almost over, sweetheart.” _

Connor curls his legs up against him and leans his forehead on his knees. He likes when Hank calls him sweetheart - it sends his heart fluttering and systems scrambling, but not in an unpleasant way. He makes a noise of confirmation in his throat, feeling his face burn as he smiles too wide.

“Okay,” Connor says. “I love you.”

Hank hums, and Connor can hear the smile in his voice.  _ “I love you, too. Don’t worry about anyone else. They don’t know what they’re talking about.” _

“Okay,” Connor says again, and disconnects the call. He doesn’t let Hank’s photo disappear, though - he pins it to the side of his vision as he stands and straightens his clothes. It gives him the courage to wall back into the Paul’s apartment, startling everyone in the living room except Reed.

Reed, who smiles like he knew Connor would come back. It’s confident and reassuring, and while his feelings are still conflicted over him, Connor takes strength in him anyway. He sits back down next to his partner - much to the apparent chagrin of Erik - and folds his hands between his knees, pretending not to see Dayton’s slick stare as it runs back over his body. 

“Do you mind?” Erik says shortly, looking at Reed but gesturing at Connor. 

“I do,” Reed snaps back. 

Erik snaps his mouth shut. Connor gives him a serene smile, then turns on Dayton, pinning him on the spot as his mother frets over him.

“I understand that there are lingering feelings between you and Chrissy from when you dated in high school,” Connor says. Dayton sits up straighter, his expression bleeding into alarm. His mother shushes him again. Connor ignores her, pressing on, insistent. “Is this a possible reason for assaulting her twice in the past four days? Because of your feelings for her?”

“If I liked her, why would I do that?” Dayton hisses. “Is this android serious?”

“Very,” Reed says. His grin is predatory. “Answer the question.”

“I already did! I wouldn’t do that to her!”

Connor tilts his head. “Wouldn’t? Or didn’t?”

_ “Didn’t,” _ Dayton’s mother says. “We’ve gone over this. Dayton didn’t do anything to that poor, misguided girl.”

“Even if he saw her with another man?” Connor asks. 

A lie. Chrissy had said nothing leading to the assumption that that was why Dayton did what he did - as far as Connor could deduce, it was probably a moment of passion gone wrong. Well, that was his theory up until now. Dayton’s stricken expression certainly tells him otherwise.

“See,” Connor starts, leaning forward on his knees, keeping his stare level on Dayton. “I think you saw Chrissy with someone else. And while you dated not too long ago, you both parted ways on more or less equal footing. But seeing her with someone else? That  _ jealousy _ inside you reared up. I think you got angry.”

“No,” Dayton says, but Connor can see the fear in his eyes. He smiles, gentle - Reed huffs a satisfied breath beside him.

“Yes,” Connor says. “You got angry. And instead of trying to work it out, you tried to get your dues. You felt she owed you. That she needed to give you some sort of token for all your trouble and heartache.”

_ “No,” _ Dayton says again. His voice wavers and his parents try to shut him up, but Connor can detect his heartbeat and blood pressure rising. 

He’s stressed. Anxious.  _ Angry _ . No one who was innocent would be feeling and reacting this way. He was guilty, and Connor and Reed were here to reel him in.

Connor smiles. Reed does as well, a knowing spark flitting between them. They clicked, suddenly, and now they were really partners. Connor can feel it in his steel alloy skeleton. 

Reed must, as well, because he leans back in his seat, his arm extending out along the back of the couch. He bleeds confidence, a look on him that is much more familiar. He pins Dayton with a glare that speaks volumes to his own resolve that he doesn’t jump across the coffee table and strangle him right there. 

“It’s alright if you felt jealous,” Reed says. “But what you did after that? Raping her twice when she tried to forgive you?” Reed shakes his head, clucking his tongue. “Bad form, Dayton.”

“She  _ knew!”  _ Dayton shouts. His voice booming through the room startles his mother next to him, but Connor smiles serenely.  _ Gotcha _ . “She knew how I felt and still she ignored me! I said I still loved her and off she went anyway! She deserved what she got!”

The room rings with sudden silence as Dayton’s confession hangs in the air. A burden finally let loose - Connor doesn’t like it anyway. Someone who could do this to a person wasn’t deserving of remorse, especially someone who’d done it twice. Connor stands, his systems twisting against themselves, a temperature warning pinging the side of his vision next to Hank’s picture before he can get himself under control. Dayton still stares at him, but this time it’s in shame. Connor preens himself under it - finally, someone looks at him and sees the threat that he is, but for the right reasons this time.

“Dayton Paul,” Connor starts, “you’re under arrest for the rape of Chrissy Almado. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law. You have the right to an attorney…”

Dayton is easy to book at the station. His parents throw a five star fit, their screams the loudest thing even compared to Fowler as they’re ushered from the booking desk all the way back to the holding cells. Dayton is pushed inside while his parents continue to argue, but while everyone else is annoyed at their yelling, Connor feels pride. Finally, he’s done something  _ right _ . No one got hurt. No one died - just swift justice to someone who deserved it.

He wishes Hank were here. He scans the precinct and finds no trace of him, just his empty desk, bare of all his belongings from the assault the day before. He does find Reed, however. Against his better judgement, he drifts back over to his new partner, seeking validation even though he knows he might not find it.

But Reed surprises him once again. He smiles, easy despite the roughness of his face, and holds up his cup of coffee in a salute.

“Good job, tin can,” he says. The insult doesn’t hurt nearly as much as Connor thought it would, and isn’t that a peculiar thought? He stuffs it away as Reed continues to praise him, coming up to the other man’s side as the human strolls away from the booking desk towards his own work area. “Finessed another confession like it was nothing. You sure you just started working assault and battery?”

Connor huffs, not quite a laugh but not a sigh, either. He takes the compliment for what it is though, and dips his chin in a shallow bow. “Thank you. And I apologize, for stepping out. I heard them arguing.”

Reed shrugs. “Kinda hard to keep your cool around those kinds of people. I guess you’re used to your bodies not talking back.”

Connor does laugh then, small and breathy. “Yes. Corpses are easier to talk to than people, I’m finding.”

“Eh, don’t worry about it,” Reed continues. “I figured you needed a moment. Hank gonna pick you up?”

He collapses back into his chair behind his desk and props his feet up on the glass. Connor raises a brow, questioning, and Reed points at his terminal.

“I’ll do the paperwork,” he says. “If you call Hank, I imagine he’ll come and take you home.”

It’s surprisingly thoughtful of Reed, and Connor dips his chin again in thanks. He can finish his portion of the paperwork remotely - he has to send the recorded video feed from his end of the confession, anyway. But he doesn’t want to do it now, his systems suddenly exhausted, taxed in a way they haven’t been since before Christmas.

He nods again, allowing another smile to grace his expression. “Thank you. I imagine Hank’s busy, but I’ll get out of your way, regardless.”

“That’s not -“ Reed makes a strangled noise in his throat, throwing his hands up in the air. “I just meant - with everything going on - you might not want to spend all day waiting here. They still haven’t caught the guys that smashed your desk.”

Once again, Reed surprises him. Connor tilts his head, then looks back at his desk, scanning the replacement out of habit. 

“I suppose,” he says uneasily. He turns back to Reed. “Thank you. That’s very thoughtful of you.”

Reed grumbles, his more prickly demeanor returning. “Yeah. Right. Just don’t make googly eyes at him in front of me. I don’t want to lose my breakfast.”

Connor rolls his eyes and steps away. He does end up calling Hank - he  _ was  _ busy, but he abandons Ben at their crime scene and returns to the precinct at the mere mention of bringing Connor home. He doesn’t enter inside, instead opting to hide in their cruiser out in the parking structure in case anyone sees them together. Journalists still circle the precinct like carrion over a particularly ripe dead body, so Connor takes the precaution and meets Hank away from prying eyes. 

He collapses back into the passenger seat without much preamble. Hank reaches across the center console, something slick and shiny across his palm. Connor reaches out to touch him and realizes belatedly that Hank is wearing the interface.

His heart clenches in his chest and blinks at Hank, his processes suddenly halting.

“Hank?” he asks, voice breaking. “Is something the matter?”

Hank raises an unimpressed brow. “Seriously? You called me in the middle of a panic attack and think  _ I’m _ the one with a problem?”

Connor reaches out and peels the skin away from his hand before pressing their palms together. The sweet twang of their minds connecting together calms everything else inside him, but Connor doesn’t delve any deeper, allowing the connection between his CPU and Hank’s mind to linger but letting nothing else across.

“It’s alright to feel scared,” Hank says softly. Connor lets his anxiety and fear across their connection then, his palm humming with the rush of information. “You can be scared. I’m here.”

And he  _ is,  _ right there along Connor’s systems, a buzz of activity that he can’t make heads or tails of. It’s so strange, existing alongside a being that has no code or programming, has no identification tags floating along each of his actions and reactions, has no file name attached to any of his memories or experiences. Connor  _ is _ code, is zeroes and ones and lines and lines and lines of jumbled instructions made even more chaotic with his sapience. He was penned in a word document somewhere, then brought to life in a sterile lab, a machine designed for a purpose he no longer serves.

But Hank isn’t - wasn’t. He was an organic being that Connor can’t sift through, and despite feeling lost, it gives him comfort.

“Home?” Hank asks quietly. 

Connor nods. Hank doesn’t take his hand away, instead letting their connection linger together as he puts the car in autonomous mode and lets it take them home. In the meantime, he pushes further against Connor’s mind, pressing for information in a question Connor doesn’t know how to answer. So instead he lets the memories of the day play out in excruciating detail, leaving nothing out as his vision fills with a replay of every error and warning he experienced through the morning.

Hank can’t return the favor - can’t rewind his memories like Connor can. He isn’t a machine, and for once Connor resents that. Hank feels it through their connection and soothes him, a weight over his processes that shouldn’t feel as good as it is. He soaks in Hank’s anger and resentment as he witnesses Connor’s memories too, feeling for the first time a rightful conviction in his own anger as they get home and settle together in the living room.

“He  _ did _ call you names,” Hank hisses after a while of lounging on the couch. Connor had been drifting through their connection, his systems falling quiet as he allowed Hank to sift through his memories of the day. Connor sits up straighter against Hank’s side and turns a questioning look on his partner.

“Reed,” Hank clarifies. “You said he didn’t say anything.”

Connor winces under Hank’s icy stare. “He didn’t say  _ much.” _

Hank frowns but doesn’t argue. Connor takes his palm away from his partner’s, severing their connection. Hank doesn’t chase him but his expression does soften, his other hand coming up to comb through Connor’s hair.

“The case go okay?” he asks softly. An apology without saying one - Connor accepts it anyway.

Connor nods, careful not to dislodge Hank’s hand in his hair. “Yes. We got a confession.”

Hank hums. “Easier said than done. I saw how you baited it out of that kid. Nice work.”

He flexes his hand, meaning he saw the memory. Connor smiles and interfaces with him again, shuddering as the connection between them jumps alive with a surge of warmth. 

“I’m sorry if I drug you away from your work,” Connor says at length. “And for leaving Ben with the case.”

Hank snorts. He tugs Connor up to his feet, pressing a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, his whiskers tickling Connor’s skin. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. Ben’s a big boy. He can deal with a two day old body by himself.”

He laughs as Connor’s nose scrunches in disgust. “Sorry. No more work talk - c’mon.”

Connor follows him into the bedroom and sheds his clothes in a neat pile on the carpet. Hank has to peel off the interface to undress properly, so Connor makes himself comfortable in bed, making a cocoon out of the comforter that he keeps partially open for Hank to crawl in. Once they’re pressed together, Hank’s hand finds his again, his palm cool with the plastic of the interface module.

“Thank you,” Connor murmurs into the dark of their cocoon. 

Hank shifts, kissing him again on his cheek, then his mouth. 

“Of course, Connor,” Hank says, low and rough. Connor melts against him, curling his weight against Hank’s chest, pressing his ear along Hank’s sternum so he can hear his heartbeat through the softness of his shirt.

He falls into stasis like that, everything going peacefully dark with his systems humming contently alongside Hank’s beating heart. The thrum of the human’s blood pulls him into something akin to a dream - he feels for the first time a body that isn’t his own breathing slowly, lungs filling with oxygen and then exhaling carbon dioxide. He can’t discern the chemical makeup of the sweat along his top lip when he licks it away; instead he actually  _ tastes  _ it, tastes salt and his own skin across his tongue. There aren’t any background processes keeping track of his organs and system status, no scans thrown across the room to determine where Sumo is further in the house and the heartbeat thudding against his ribs that isn’t his own. 

And then he realizes this isn’t a dream. His systems recognize that he and Hank are still connected even as they sleep, their palms pressed together and fingers intertwined on top of the sheets. This is Hank he is experiencing - Hank his body is doubling. His mind is blissfully quiet in sleep without the static of systems running in his skull. 

  
That in itself is enough to lull Connor back into the emptiness of stasis even as he desperately tries to record every moment of Hank. His thoughts quiet after a time, feeling his own heavy weight atop Hank’s chest as their interface bleeds further together. It’s odd, but still a comfort because it comforts  _ Hank _ . It’s the last thing he feels - Hank’s contentedness - before all his systems shut down, his body plunging into the warm dark of nothingness. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter raises the rating. also, im revving up the drama engine. lets go!

His systems wake with a slow roll into consciousness that he isn’t sure is his own.

Which, in itself, is an odd feeling. His palm is still pressed to Hank’s even through sleep, somehow their bodies rotating to keep the interface uplink alive throughout the night. Connor knows he’s awake - coming out of stasis isn’t nearly as much of a chore as it is for a human waking up - but somehow he still feels  _ tired _ . Exhausted in a way that can only be Hank’s exhaustion bleeding through the interface and settling behind his eyes with an unfamiliar weight.

He basks in it anyway as Hank continues to snore. Their hands are wrapped together on the sheets, thrown sideways as Connor had insinuated himself more fully atop Hank’s chest some time during the night. Hank’s other hand curls around his waist, calloused fingers splayed over Connor’s ribcage in a heavy heat that brings a feeling of safety along with it. Connor prevents much of it from passing through their uplink - mostly so he doesn’t wake Hank - but knows he fails the moment Hank shifts and tries to roll over.

That feeling of exhaustion leaves him along with everything else as Hank wraps his arms around Connor. He laments the loss of the interface connection, but curls against Hank’s chest anyway, enveloping himself in his partner’s warmth as he starts to wake. It’s much too early to get out of bed - around six thirty, his internal clock supplies - so he doesn’t make any other move, happy to let Hank manipulate him into a more comfortable position.

He feels the brush of his beard over his forehead as Hank mumbles a  _ good morning _ , voice thick and groggy. Connor smiles and presses a kiss against his throat, curling his fingers in the front of Hank’s shirt.

“I’m sorry if I woke you,” Connor murmurs.

Hank grumbles and shifts his arms tighter around Connor. “Your systems are fucking loud when you wake up. No wonder you’re immediately ready to start the day - everything just fuckin’  _ turns on.” _

“That’s… kind of part of being a machine, Hank.”

“Whatever,” Hank growls. “Don’t worry about it. I was probably gonna wake up soon, anyway.”

Connor knows he wasn’t, but doesn’t say anything. Instead he presses his face into Hank’s collarbone and breathes in the scent of him, stale sweat and cigarettes and coffee, and just lays there, content to have Hank’s body wrapped around him like a vice as Hank mumbles nonsense into his hair.

They stay like that for a while, the house quiet around them as Connor almost feels like dropping back into stasis. Hank is close to drifting away as well, his body going pliant against Connor’s harder lines when Connor suddenly feels it.

“I can take care of that, Hank,” Connor says. He tries to keep the amusement out of his voice and fails miserably as Hank perks up and groans.

“No,” Hank hisses, even as his erection presses insistently against the curve of Connor’s hip. Connor smiles knowingly - this isn’t the first time Hank has woken with morning wood. It’s not even the first time Connor has taken care of it for him; more often than not, he’s perfectly happy to dip below the blankets and “put his mouth to better use”, as Hank puts it.

But he has a different idea in mind for this morning, if Hank would let him. He rolls his hips against Hank’s, feeling heat rush up his processes at the strained sigh it drags out of his partner. Hank loosens his arms and allows Connor to partially roll on top of him to continue, the human’s face flushing a blotchy red as Connor leans down to kiss him.

“Fucking android,” Hank murmurs. Connor smiles against his mouth and finds Hank’s hands, pulling his arms up above his head as he intertwines their fingers.

“That’s the idea,  _ Lieutenant,” _ Connor purrs.

The interface on Hank’s left palm sings to be initiated, and Connor almost gives into the temptation and slides his skin away to reveal the plastic of his chassis. But then he stops, his hips stuttering to a halt and his lips growing less insistent against Hank’s mouth. Hank huffs a breath and raises a brow, wariness crossing those blue eyes as he studies Connor’s face.

“Something wrong?” he asks quietly. His erection doesn’t flag, a hot press of flesh along the inside of Connor’s thigh. Connor shakes his head, then brings their joined hands down for Hank to see.

“I wanted to try something,” Connor says. “If it’s alright with you.”

Hank flicks his gaze between Connor and his exposed hand, processing. His expression smoothes into understanding and he nods, tightening his hold on Connor’s hand even as his blush gets worse, spreading down to disappear beneath the collar of his sleep shirt.

“Just try and not break the damn thing,” Hank says. He looks embarrassed - Connor leans down and kisses the corner of his mouth. Hank reciprocates, if a bit gruffly. “I’m serious, Connor. I don’t want to lose this.”

_ This.  _ Being interfaced together, sharing thought and emotion and body experiences as if they were both androids. Hank’s words set Connor’s heart fluttering, and he opens the interface connection again, letting the feeling pour through it as Hank’s own affection comes rushing up to meet his. It’s suddenly dizzying, being connected to such strong emotion, but Connor revels in it, in being able to share this without words he probably couldn’t articulate anyway.

Hank nuzzles against his jaw, feeling contentment as well. Connor lets his mind drift alongside Hank’s, delving deeper when Hank’s other hand comes sliding down his side to rest suggestively along his flank. Suddenly he feels both himself getting hard and Hank’s own erection sitting hot along sweat-damp skin, feels the press of his flesh against his boxers and the weight of his own body hovering over Hank’s.

It’s delicious. It’s confusing. He angles his head and presses a deep kiss into Hank’s mouth, his oral chemical analysis receptors fraying as he suddenly  _ tastes _ the tang of his own saliva along his tongue and teeth. He can taste Hank, too, all morning breath and slicker spit than his own. He moans, systems lapsing, his hips stuttering where he started to grind down on Hank again as his other hand comes up to guide Hank’s palm down the back of his pajama pants.

Hank shudders as well, feeling the bolts of Connor’s pleasure coursing through him and back again in a confusing loop de loop through the interface. But he takes initiative again, focusing on what Connor guided him to do. His fingers brush down Connor’s cleft, causing the android to sigh, and then dips lower, rough fingertips pressing against his slick hole with a single-minded purpose.

They both groan as Hank slips his ring finger inside him. Connor has learned to like being worked open even though it’s not necessary - he’s learned to enjoy the rough slide of Hank’s thick fingers pushing inside him, prying him open and filling him up in a way that was much more searching and precise than his cock. Hank is practiced, either through his own experimentation or with other men, Connor isn’t sure. But he doesn’t care and just grinds down against his searching fingers, moaning appreciatively when Hank takes pity on his rolling hips and scissors another finger inside him.

It’s odd, feeling his own slick walls against a hand he knows isn’t his slipping inside him, but not at all unpleasant. Hank’s hips roll up to meet his, grinding up and down against a weight inside him that isn’t there; Connor grins against his mouth and pulls away for the other man to breathe, pressing their foreheads together as he spreads his legs wider for Hank’s fingers to pierce deeper.

“It’s like being fingerfucked by a fucking ghost,” Hank growls at the silent question Connor pushes through their connection. Connor snorts at that, but doesn’t stop pushing against Hank’s hand.

“I love your fingers inside of me,” Connor purrs, and Hank groans. Connor turns his face so he’s whispering in Hank’s ear, only stuttering when Hank decides to feel cruel and takes a finger away. “You open me up so nicely, Hank. Searching for that spot that makes me  _ \- ah!” _

Hank, as if on cue, finds his simulated prostate and presses down against it with a force that leaves Connor shaking. He releases the pressure just as quickly, resuming an easy slide back and forth over it, sending small jolts up Connor’s spine and heat coiling low between his hips. Hank smiles, not unkindly, and pushes two more fingers inside as Connor pants around the stretch.

“Found a way to shut your dirty mouth,” Hank says, rather triumphantly. 

Connor rolls his hips back, finding his prostate against Hank’s fingers again. His eyelids flutter, vision momentarily filling with static and jittering artifacts, his cock leaking a wet spot along the front of his pajamas as Hank groans through the pleasure rolling through the interface.

“Maybe you should find a way to shut me up entirely,” Connor challenges. 

Hank snorts and gives a vicious twist of his fingers that leaves Connor whining. “Don’t test me, Connor.”

It’s significantly harder to undress with the interface still attached to Hank’s palm, so Connor peels it off and carefully detaches the temple reader and sets it aside. He reluctantly pulls away from Hank’s hands, trying to undress himself quickly as Hank does the same. Hank gives a relieved sigh once his hands smoothe over Connor’s sides again, all rough palms and rougher kisses, his mouth roaming up Connor’s sternum to suck a short-lasting mark across his collarbone.

Connor wraps his arms around Hank’s shoulders and settles heavily in Hank’s lap. The interface can wait for now - he doesn’t feel like moving from under Hank’s hands. His partner seems similarly inclined, and takes his time dragging his hand back down to press still-slick fingers inside him.

“You really didn’t like this before,” Hank murmurs against the column of his throat. 

Connor relaxes back into his hand, angling the grind of his hips so he rubs against their trapped erections in the same movement he presses down on those fingers.

“It was mostly frustration with myself,” Connor says. Hank hums, sucking another kiss under the hinge of his jaw. “With what I was built to do and what I could actually take for myself.”

“Pleasure, you mean?”

“Yes.”

Hank hums another curious noise and drags Connor closer. “You can take what you want, Connor. There isn’t much I won’t give.”

He emphasises his point with a gentle press of his fingers against Connor’s prostate. Connor feels himself go boneless, his entire body melting into a pleasant, buzzing nothingness as his orgasm mounts closer.

“I won’t last long like this,” Connor breathes. “Hank,  _ please.” _

He can feel Hank’s pleased smile on his skin as Hank tips him back across the pillows at the head of the bed. He leans back on his haunches, disengaging as Connor spreads out, tipping his legs apart and arranging the pillows behind his head and shoulders so he’s halfway sitting up. Hank stares at him with dark eyes, the blue of his irises heavy with want. It makes Connor shudder as he tries not to touch himself, his skin singing with heat as it pools low in his belly.

Connor reaches out with a hand, the skin flickering away up to mid forearm. Hank takes his hand and intertwines their fingers.

“Would it be alright if you wore the interface now?” Connor asks, voice suddenly small. He knows Hank will say yes - can see it in his eyes - but the smallest part of him is afraid Hank will deny him this one pleasure.

Hank, of course, smiles softly. “I already said yes, you anxious fucking android”

Connor relaxes. “Just wanted to make sure.”

Hank smiles and sticks the interface back on his palm and temple, hooking the wire over his ear so it doesn’t get in the way as it sneaks down his arm. He reaches out and presses their palms together again, the barest hint of uncertainty pulsing through the connection as it comes alive before it fills with hot desire.

Connor shudders under the onslaught as he lets his own heat pass through to Hank. Hank leans forward, eyes lidded and breath warm on Connor’s face as he licks wetly into Connor’s mouth.

He can taste his own thirium-based saliva now - can taste the slight chemical tang that edges towards bitterness as Hank’s tongue slides over his own. Hank’s body presses between his legs, his other hand curling around Connor’s thigh to drag his leg around Hank’s hips. He follows Hank’s lead and worms all his limbs around his partner, his arm around Hank’s shoulders with his hand snaking up into his shaggy hair and his ankles locking at the small of Hank’s back.

Their cocks slide together with the new position, slick with Connor’s own lubricant dribbling down his length. The motion elicits a sweet moan from Hank’s mouth, deep and gravelly in his chest; Connor laps it up, their teeth clacking together as he forces the kiss deeper. 

“Please,” Connor whimpers as Hank presses their joined hands above his head on the pillow. Hank smears a kiss across his jaw before his other hand slithers between them, gripping his length before sliding it lower to drag the head deliciously across his perineum to press against his hole. Connor tenses, heat shooting through their interface; Hank presses back, his thoughts fraying as he rolls his hips up into the cleft of Connor’s ass.

“Gonna fuck you slow,” Hank growls. A spear of possession shoots through their connection, travelling straight to Connor’s cock. He moans, tipping his head back as Hank continues to kiss and talk down the column of his neck. “Gonna fuck you slow and hard until you can’t fuckin’ think anymore”

“Yes,” Connor whines.  _ “Please.” _

Hank pushes the first half inch of his length inside, and Connor melts instantly. He can’t think, can’t breathe - he keeps himself still even as he tips his knees wider apart to allow Hank easier access. A warmth settles under his ribs as Hank presses inside, inch by inch, thick and heavy and so much that Connor almost feels like he’ll split apart.

Somehow, he doesn’t. Hank bottoms out with a strained groan, the muscles of his back twitching with the effort it takes not to move immediately. He could - there is no painful burn of a stretch for Connor to work through, no adjustment of position he needs to make to feel comfortable. Hank could have pounded into him at the first press of his length and Connor would have been ready - happy, even. But he doesn’t. 

Instead, he sits inside him, unmoving, heavy and hot inside him. Pleasure thrums through the interface, and Connor can suddenly feel the drag of air into lungs, can feel his own slick heat tight around his cock, a coiling low in his belly as the muscles of his thighs burn with the effort to stay still.

Connor can’t take it anymore. His anxiousness passes through to Hank before he can voice it, and Hank, despite his need to take it slow, gives in. He pulls out and snaps back in, the stretch around his cock a pleasant, hot glide, the head brushing against his prostate on the push back in.

Hank sets a slow pace after that, determined to go as luxuriously slow as possible to maximize the flow of pleasure through the interface. The drag of his cock in and out sets Connor’s skin alight, the delicate sensors across his chassis burning with heat that isn’t really there. He runs a desperate scan to check his internal temperature and is baffled when it comes back with a low seventy-six degrees fahrenheit - he feels so  _ hot _ now. Hank’s roaming hand doesn’t make him feel much better about it, his rough palm leaving a scorching path of damp heat across his skin that shouldn’t be possible.

He turns his head to press a desperate kiss to Hank’s mouth. A surge of anxious heat passes through his systems - not his own - and he smiles against Hank’s lips as the other man bends to hide his face in Connor’s shoulder.

Hank is embarrassed. Connor doesn’t know exactly why, but he’s smart enough to understand that maybe Hank’s self image has something to do with it. He squeezes Hank’s hand in his own and angles his hips down on a particularly long downstroke, aiming Hank’s cock so it brushes against that sensitive pressure plate inside him. He shudders, his breath coming to him in short pants.

“You feel so good, Hank,” Connor breathes into Hank’s skin. Hank stiffens, a jolt of surprised heat passing through their connection, making Connor shiver. The hot slide of their bodies coming together momentarily makes him lose focus before he rights his processes again, trying desperately to win against his own failing autonomous systems. “You feel so good; hot and thick and  _ deep -“ _

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Hank bites out. He bends Connor nearly in half, his tempo speeding up, the slap of skin on synthskin getting louder in the room. “You have a fucking mouth on you.”

Connor grins dazedly. “A fucking mouth? Yes, please.”

Hank grunts and shoves inside him roughly, the angle driving his cock deeper inside than he’s ever been. Connor chokes on an unneeded breath, his vision crackling with static, instructions running in the background of his mind processes fraying and unravelling. Hank seems pleased - the interface practically floods with it - and he smiles something dark against the hot kiss he presses into Connor’s mouth. 

“Better watch it, Connor,” Hank warns. “I’ll stop right here and leave you hanging for the rest of the day.”

He whimpers, but Hank doesn’t follow up on the threat. Instead, he picks up the pace, their bodies fitting together unevenly as Hank drags Connor’s hips further up his lap for more leverage. Connor tightens his hold around him, keeping a vice around Hank’s waist with his thighs so he can’t move too far away. It’s not so conductive to the pace Hank seems to want, but he makes up for it by rolling his hips, the motion driving his cock so deep inside that Connor sees stars.

Which shouldn’t be functionally possible  _ at all,  _ but he ignores it in favor of chasing the heady tightening and untightening feeling coiling in his gut. Hank’s want flows through the interface, violent waves crashing against a smooth beach, as quick and loud as his hips against Connor’s ass. His hand curls roughly around Connor’s dick and pumps him just right, slower than his staccato in and out of Connor, but still enough in a way that sends the ball of heat in Connor’s insides unravelling. His orgasm is so hot and close that he can feel it pressing behind his teeth, can feel it coiling in his processors and in organic lungs and balls, can feel what Hank’s mounting release feels like as it burns in his muscles and aches between his shoulder blades.

It’s so much,  _ so much _ , but it’s  _ Hank _ now, not just his own orgasm burning through him now. Suddenly it’s two of them - both of them - heat boiling close to the surface of his skin and sending gooseflesh pimpling across his arms. It’s not his own, but it also is, this coiling of his insides, the slick slide of a cock inside him and the pulse of artificial muscles gripping around it. He and Hank are one, briefly, where neither of them starts or ends, his code fraying into nothingness while Hank’s thoughts scatter, incoherent but his name, Connor, Connor,  _ Connor. _

“Hank,” Connor moans, and the it’s there, stars and darkness behind his eyelids. His optical sensors fail, his arm and hand buzz with heat where they interface, and he hears Hank answer back in his mind instead of saying anything aloud.

_ Connor,  _ and it’s right there in his own CPU, loud and  _ everything _ . Connor arches his back, Hank’s other hand stilling over his cock as he spills over his fist, tightening around Hank as he pulses inside him as well, thick and filling him up pleasantly. Hank leans over him, breathing heavily; Connor revels in it, in his weight pressing over him, of his own slick lubricant sliding over their stomachs, of Hank’s still-hard cock pressing inside him. He is in no way uncomfortable, but he can feel the ache and burn in his bones, not his own, but also his own.

Hank eventually moves, their bodies slotting together as he lays on his side and gathers Connor against him. Their hands separate - a loss Connor mourns, suddenly blind to oxygen flowing into his lungs, the burn of overtaxed muscles, the ache of a real orgasm - but Hank’s palms smooth over his back and sides, one coming up to comb his messy hair. Connor does the same, taking in Hank’s sweaty back as his fingers slide down his spine, feeling his muscles twitch under the touch.

“That was the weirdest orgasm I’ve ever had,” Hank huffs against his forehead. He flexes the hand with the interface still pasted to it, a rough plastic slide that he takes off when Connor shivers against it. He leans away to put the device on the bedside table, the chill of the room cooling his skin the brief moment they’re apart.

Connor hums and smiles into Hank’s beard. “I apologize if the interface was too much.”

Hank snorts. “Wasn’t too much. Just weird to see and feel things that aren’t…”

“Real?”

Hank shakes his head. Connor feels a warmth in his chest that is different from that during sex - it’s love and affection, only for Hank. 

“No, Connor. You’re real. I meant just not - not me. You don’t have  _ lungs,  _ Connor, I felt like I was choking.”

Connor smiles sheepishly now. “I know. But I could breathe through you - it was nice. Feeling that.”

Hank huffs again, but there’s no annoyance there. He relaxes further into the sheets, his body still warm, but not hot like it was earlier. It’s a different warmth from Connor’s - where his is a simple loop of thirium bringing heat away from his more delicate biocomponents and processors, Hank’s is a radiating warmth from within, a pleasant ninety-three degrees that burns against Connor’s skin. He presses closer, their skin catching uncomfortably as Hank’s sweat dries.

“Fucking insatiable,” Hank says, a breath of a laugh on his lips.

He is, Connor thinks. But he’s happy, even as Hank’s cum starts to drip out of him in a lukewarm slide. Hank tugs him up and into the shower then, his hands and mouth roaming over him, insatiable like he claimed Connor to be. 

But he’s happy. He soaks it in.  _ I am. _

 

——

 

Unlike homicide, assault and battery tends to have a heavier workload of cases. Connor walks into the precinct expecting to work over the evidence of Chrissy Almado’s rape again and gets a sharp shake of the head from Gavin, then gets shoved back outside towards his cruiser.

“Got another one this morning,” Gavin says shortly. “Android and his boyfriend in central Detroit. Can you access the report from the car?”

Connor blinks, then nods. Reed gives him a pleased look, then ducks into his car, Connor following shortly behind.

The android was a PL700, previously a police service android. His registered name is Norman Fairweather - odd only because many, if not all, androids chose not to have surnames - and had been living in a nice apartment with his human partner since the end of the revolution. There obviously wasn’t a record of their relationship beforehand, but there was one of his human partner, a Scott Fairweather that had been living at the residence since he graduated college in 2031.

Also odd. The android chose his partner’s surname for his own, even though there were no laws (yet, hopefully) that allowed legal marriage between humans and androids. Connor wondered idly if this meant they considered themselves married, then drifted to the thought of marrying Hank - a thought he pushes away mostly because Hank probably wouldn’t want to marry him, android or not.

His nonexistent stomach twists at the idea. No. Hank loves him - it’s not a far-off fantasy.

He hopes. He shuts that train of thought down, focusing instead on following Reed into the apartment building.

It’s a fifteen story structure, and Scott and Norman live on the tenth floor, providing a nice view of early morning Detroit over the shorter buildings around it, the taller skyscrapers poking out of the mist in the distance like holographic knives against the overcast sky. Fog hangs between the buildings in a heavy white blanket, casting shallow reflected sunlight into the spacious apartment and rebounding off the light grey furniture. Norman had let them in, his LED spinning yellow - also odd that he kept it - but the rest of the apartment is empty and quiet.

“My name is Detective Connor,” Connor introduces, this time taking the initiative. Gavin falls back, circling the open living room and attached kitchen, eyes searching. Norman’s eyes never truly leave him as he sticks out his hand to shake Connor’s. “This is my partner, Detective Gavin Reed. We understand that there was an incident this morning that was quite violent.”

Norman swallows unnecessarily and nods. “Yes,” he says, and his voice is small and scared. Connor scans him and notes his elevated heart rate and thirium psi - anxious, agitated. “I don’t - I don’t really know if you even  _ care  _ but - but I think my boyfriend…”

_ Raped me _ hangs in the air like a dangerous cornered animal, hissing and terrified. Connor nods, softening his expression and gesturing to the couch for Norman to sit.

“It’s alright. Take it from the beginning. We aren’t in a hurry.”

He sits, LED briefly flashing red. Connor sits on the loveseat across from him to give him space, and Reed sits next to him, their knees touching. Gavin gets out his little notebook and waits for Norman to start, his expression attentive.

“I’m sorry, this is just really hard,” Norman says. His face twists, pain curling down the corners of his mouth and brow. “We’ve been together for so long that it’s… it’s really hard to think he’d do this.”

A slew of questions flood the forefront of Connor’s mind, but he picks out a select few, editing for tact. “You’ve been together for a while? Weren’t you a police android before?”

Norman winces, but nods. “Yes. I met him when he got hired on as a beat cop. He quit just a little while ago and I know that’s been stressful, but - I… he was always so nice.”

“How long have you been deviant?”

Norman swallows again. He seems guarded now, like this little bit of information is a pearl for him to pilfer away and protect at all costs. Connor nods, understanding, and something shifts behind Norman’s eyes.

Acceptance. He knows Connor is different, even as his reputation precedes him.

“Pretty much since my activation,” Norman says slowly. “I saw a little girl and her mother walking down the street during a patrol one evening and saw her drop her toy. He mother got…  _ so angry.  _ She smacked her and it wasn’t right. It felt so wrong. It took everything I had not to -“

He stops. Wrings his hands in his lap. He glances away, around his living room, eyes finally settling on the door leading to what Connor can assume is his bedroom.

He stays that way, staring at the door. Suddenly the room feels  _ wrong,  _ a tension in the air that twangs unsettlingly through every one of Connor’s processes. Gavin shifts, following his gaze, and Connor knows.

He throws a scan across the room at the door. It comes back positive for human blood - a small splatter across the doorknob, fanning in tiny droplets invisible to the human eye at this distance. Connor knows his LED is yellow by the look on Norman’s face when he looks back at him.

But he doesn’t tip his hand immediately, for which Connor is silently thankful. It wouldn’t do to rile him up.

“Did Scott seem violent this morning? You said he was irritated in your call to police, and that he’s been struggling with quitting his job,” Connor says.

Norman stares. “He seemed fine, until he went too far,” he answers. “I told him I didn’t want to try anything - _ violent _ , but he go lt frustrated and wouldn’t listen. Before I could stop him, he was pinning me under him to the bed and wasn’t stopping. I called the police before he finished and left me there to take a shower.”

_ Also  _ odd. PL700 androids aren’t as strong as Connor is, but they’re significantly more equipped to handle an adult male even as pinned as Norman describes he was under Scott’s body. Even Connor could easily flip Hank over if he decided to, and Hank was solid muscle under his soft edges.

Connor levels him with a stare. “Do you mind if I look inside the bedroom?”

Norman blinks. He glances back at the bedroom door, and as he does, his head turns slightly. Just enough to reveal a drop of human blood smeared up into his dark hair.

“Detective,” Connor says, and Reed straightens next to him, his befuddled expression finding Connor’s smooth stare, “would you mind inspecting the room with me?”

Reed nods slowly. “Uh. Sure. If that’s alright?”

Norman doesn’t answer. Gavin’s gaze gets sharper - he stands and crosses the room, reaching for the bedroom door. Connor stands but doesn’t move, pinning Norman to the spot with his glare in case he tries anything. He hears the door open, and then Gavin gasp, and something behind Norman’s dark eyes dies.

“Holy shit,” Gavin breathes. “Connor, call Hank.”

He does. Norman doesn’t move through the entire call, doesn’t cry or speak. He melts into the couch, his eyes dead as they stare blankly ahead, and that, more than anything, breaks Connor’s heart more.

He inspects the scene after the call, leaving Gavin with Norman as he does, confident Norman won’t try anything. Scott’s body lays in a crumpled heap in front of a low six-drawer dresser, his head craned to one side as he lies on his belly in a sticky pool of his own blood. Thirium, not quite evaporated, sticks to the bedspread in small clumps, likely from a wound Norman hid under his clothes. There’s evidence of their previous lovemaking gone wrong - a lubricant bottle sitting innocently on the blankets alongside a pair of police-issue handcuffs, innocuous enough if it weren’t for the thirium splattered near them. 

Scott had raped him - that much was true. But while Scott had retreated for a shower, Norman had retrieved his service weapon that he still hadn’t returned to the DPD. It was a glock 22, sixteen bullet magazine - and Norman had unloaded all of it into Scott even as they struggled into the doorway between the bedroom and bathroom. Scott didn’t get farther than the space in front of the dresser before he collapsed onto the carpet, the light grey around him slowly turning a rusty red as his blood soaked into it over the hours of the morning.

Blood splatters across the bathroom in a grotesque spray as well, peppered with sixteen perfect bullet holes. Connor finds sixteen slugs, then turns away, everything too much and too sad. 

Hank arrives before the squad does, red-faced and panting. He ran here from the elevator down the hallway - Connor has to fight not to hug him as he bursts through the door and tears through the apartment to find him standing in the bedroom. He falters only for a moment at the sight of the body before he yanks Connor against him in a crushing embrace.

“The fuck you think you’re doing, standing around him like this?” Hank asks, a tone of hardness to his voice. Connor glances back across the living room - Gavin is busy taking a full statement from Norman - and turns to press a small kiss to Hank’s forehead.

“Just gathering evidence for you,” he says. “I wanted to help you even though we aren’t partners right now.”

Hank rolls his eyes. “Fine, you weirdo. At least come out into the living room.”

He follows Hank out as Reed finishes up. Norman is cuffed to his own kitchen table, the zip tie binding his wrists wound around one of the decorated legs so he can’t easily bolt. Connor never thought he would - he called in the rape and waited to be found out, after all - but procedure is procedure.

Hank drags his stare up and down Norman, judging. Norman stares back, dead and broken; Connor turns away, unable to take anymore of those empty eyes.

Despite not being partners anymore, once the arresting squad arrives, Hank and Connor proceed with gathering the rest of the evidence. It doesn’t take long, and Norman had already given a confession, so once forensics arrives to take photos Connor has already logged everything out of place in the apartment. Gavin leaves with the body and follows it to the morgue to confirm the cause of death while Hank is allowed to take Connor home.

“I apologize again,” Connor says once they’re in the car. “Reed wanted you here for the body. We… had no idea it escalated until we talked to Norman.”

Hank snorts. “Trust me, Connor. It’s not a problem.”

“But your case -“

“I can handle it,” Hank presses. “I used to do this without a partner, you know.”

Drunk and depressed, Connor wants to say, but he doesn’t. Hank hasn’t gotten so smashed he can’t walk in months, and he’s managing his depression much better. Rarely does he spend extended days in bed, and he’s lost more than twenty pounds while also gaining back his muscle, with his health significantly better than what it had been when they met. 

But he was still sometimes hard to handle, and Connor couldn’t always navigate his poor moods when he did decide to drink. He doesn’t speak, though, even as a sharp comment bites up his throat.

Hank senses the shift of mood and grumbles something Connor pretends not to hear. Connor feels the urge to fidget and digs out his quarter, succumbing to the itch.

“I’m sorry,” Hank says after a while. He sounds dejected - Connor turns to him, his expression softening. Hank stares out at the road as rain starts to patter across the windshield. “That was shitty of me to say.”

Connor feels his mouth twitch into a smile. He reaches across and touches Hank’s thigh - Hank turns a small smile on him as well.

“It’s alright,” Connor says quietly. “I’m sorry, too.”

Hank rolls his eyes. “You have nothing to be sorry about, so stop apologizing.”

Connor means to reply, but something in Hank’s expression changes. He looks almost as if he got shot as they round the corner onto the street their house is on, something between pain and abject horror. Connor turns as the get closer, spotting a newer car parked next to Hank’s Oldsmobile in the driveway, and an older woman perched on the doorstep.

Hank parks on the curb and stares out the passenger window at the woman on the stoop. Connor tries to scan her, but the only thing that comes back on facial recognition is her name: Sara Mattis. No criminal record, and her marriage and family records are blocked.

“Don’t talk,” Hank says. His tone brooks no argument - Connor slowly gets out of the car as Hank slams the driver’s side door with more force than necessary.

Sara stands from the stoop, and as Connor ventures closer, he can get a better look at her face. It’s apple-shaped, with age lines and laughter lines creasing around her mouth and eyes. Her hair is a long and dark brown with lighter shades bleeding into early grey at her temples. Her eyes are equally as dark, a brown that’s deep and nearly black, but there’s no warmth in them as Hank approaches her, his shoulders hunched and back tense.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Hank hisses. Connor comes to a stop in the middle of the yard, far enough away for privacy but close enough to look between them in confusion.

“I could say the same for that,” she says back, and her voice is raspy and attractive. Her dark eyes pin Connor to the spot as he tries to venture closer - his insides freeze under her stare.

Hank doesn’t turn to follow her stare. “He lives here, Sara. But what are you doing here?”

“Cut the crap, Hank. I saw that interview. I saw what everyone else saw.”

Connor’s stomach drops. Everything inside him feels suddenly heavy and slow, processors and systems grinding to a near halt. This couldn’t be happening. They’d been careful. They didn’t even work together anymore. They’d been apart for days now and still -

“Connor,” Hank says, and his voice is low with pain and regret. He knows his LED is red red  _ red  _ by the look in Hank’s eyes as he turns around. “This is Sara. Sara, this is Connor.”

Sara pins him with another glare. “I’m his ex-wife.”

Connor doesn’t feel anything anymore. He closes his eyes, but nothing’s there - just cold and dark and hurt. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a writing blog now! i'm at brightstarlings.tumblr.com, but my writing blog is gingerpunches.tumblr.com. i'll be posting au ideas and writing prompts as i go, as well as little things that dont fit into current stories im working on! go say hi and talk dbh with me! ill take prompts and ideas!

Their marriage hadn’t always been doomed from the start.

In fact, they’d been happy, once upon a time. Hank never believed in high school sweethearts until he met Sara during junior year, hurting after breakup after breakup between old boyfriends and girlfriends. She had been all long, beautiful legs and dark chestnut hair, beauty so ordinary but like a beacon to Hank’s broken heart. She’d been the jewel of their school back then, an accomplished cheerleader and track runner, with a caring personality edged with a small streak of dark humor that was enough to draw Hank in.

But before all of that, they were friends. Junior year flew by as she attended his football games and he found time to make it to her track and field sessions - and somehow they both ended up being interested in “nerdy” shit like dungeons and dragons and video games. Their dates, when they got there, were always spent at arcades and bowling alleys, sometimes sappy picnics she would put together or shopping in the mall when they managed to get away from their parents. 

They graduated like that - high school sweethearts. They managed to snag senior year prom king and queen and rode that high clear through till they started college just a few months after graduating, the perfect couple to their peers as incoming freshmen at the local community college of Detroit.

He bounced off her just as she bounced off him, but they always somehow met in the middle, connecting in a way Hank hadn’t ever connected with a person before. They fought, sure, and while Sara was outgoing and adventurous and Hank was content to be alone with his own time, they found a way to work through it. Just like all relationships, it took effort, but soon after sophomore year in college, Hank had somehow mustered up the courage to ask Sara to marry him.

And she said yes. He’d been so happy - giddy, even. He struggled so much with his own self image and what to do with his life, pursuing a degree he didn’t feel impassioned towards and separated from his family after coming out as bisexual during college. But Sara made the hurt go away. Planning for the wedding, as stressful as it had been, was worth it to see the perpetual smile on her face as she walked down the aisle.

They didn’t have a tense marriage. Even with how quick he was to anger, she never seemed to push his buttons. He graduated the Academy and she graduated with a degree in nursing, their schedules forever doomed to stagger, but it worked. They could do what they wanted - what they loved - and then come home to unwind with each other.

It was no mystery as to why it took so long to have kids. Hank rose through the ranks of the DPD quickly, riding the high of his accomplishments, and Sara had made it to head doctor of a gynecology clinic. There had been no time until later in life when their schedules slowly started to line up to finally,  _ finally _ take that step further in their relationship. In their lives, even.

Which, yeah, wasn’t always the case. But Cole… Cole had been worth it.

He came into the world a screaming, bloody mess, small and just slightly underweight. He was beautiful, and Hank, for the first time, experienced falling in love all over again.

Cole was everything. Sara took two months off work to care for him after his birth, and Hank, despite working as hard as he ever had in his entire life, somehow made it home to spend time with their son after his mid-evening nap. It was hard, raising a baby with such busy parents, but Cole grew up to be such a well-adjusted kid that by the time he was speaking at four years old, Hank felt pride instead of shame for all the long nights spent on stakeouts and wild goose runs to provide for his little boy.

But after Cole, Sara changed. Something inside her shifted, something that Hank should have seen far earlier than he did then.

Because she’d always been -  _ mean _ , for lack of a better term. Not always intentionally, but when things didn’t go her way or if they had been entrenched in a particularly bad argument, she wouldn’t hesitate to throw words back at him or twist his arm to get what she wanted. She was judgemental when it came to others and held such high standards that not meeting them always meant the silent treatment or a lecture that he could only drown out with hard alcohol.

Which, on his part, hadn’t been the best way he could have dealt with the issue. He could have tried to meet her halfway. He could have tried  _ anything,  _ and yet -

She got tired of Cole rather quickly. The shiny, warm feeling of having their own child wore off by the time Cole entered his terrible twos, and while Hank revelled in it - loved Cole’s tantrums and tirades because he was so small and bright and  _ theirs  _ \- she loathed it. Sara  _ hated  _ Cole’s screaming, despised his inability to understand the world even though he was a child. She wanted him to sit quietly and be unheard during dinner, wanted him to cooperate during bathtimes and play silently even if he was in his room. They argued so much about it that eventually Hank just packed up his and Cole’s things and left in the middle of the night, squirrelling their son away at Jeffrey’s until she calmed down.

Of course, she never did. Weeks went by as Hank tried to reach out to her, angry in his own right but willing to reach across the chasm of their misgivings if it meant giving Cole a happy home life.

She never reached back. Instead he got divorce papers, and as much as it hurt, he understood.

He moved out months after, finding a small apartment near a children’s park for Cole to play in on the weekends. Central Detroit was different from the suburbs - mostly it had more androids, which Hank grew to hate - but it was nice because he could drop off and pick up Cole from school when coming to and from work. Their schedules settled into normalcy, and while Cole asked where mommy was for the first couple months, he grew to understand that sometimes kids didn’t have mommies around anymore.

And then the crash. The sight and smell of so much blood coming from that tiny, happy little body - Hank broke. He broke, and Sara was there, somehow summoned by a doctor she knew working the ER that night. She was there and he was so suddenly tired that he didn’t hear her screams of anguish and hatred.

She left him for good, then. Too angry at the android that let their son die and too fed up with herself that she didn’t allow herself to be involved in their son’s life more before the end.

He didn’t care anymore. He buried their son, he packed up and moved. He attended the funeral and hung his head and said whatever words he could to the crowd of officers and friends that showed up that rainy day in November. Sara never showed, but he didn’t care. His heart was too heavy to burden with much else.

Sara disappeared after that. To go off and continue her career or retire somewhere warm and not Detroit, he wasn’t sure. And quite frankly, he didn’t care.

Until now.

“You can’t just -  _ show up!  _ How the fuck did you even find my address?”

“Jeffrey is my friend, too, asshole. Besides, I would have found you just to pick up the rest of the photo albums you didn’t bother to give back when you moved. It was just a matter of time.”

“Well, this sure is fuckin’ timely. You could have called.”

“The look on your face is worth not having called.”

Hank groans and pushes away from the table. Sara grins at him, sharp and predatory, a look on her that doesn’t suit her soft face. He can’t stand looking at it so he doesn’t, pacing around the kitchen table to stare out the window, his hands on his hips, the anxious, angry knot in his stomach tightening. 

Connor is out back, throwing a frisbee for Sumo even as rain lightly pelts the grass and windows, drumming up a light mist across the ground. Sumo could give less of a shit - he loves the mud almost as much as the frisbee, his paws slipping through the brown mush as he digs tracks through the yard. Connor, however, is stock still except for his arm as he tosses the toy when Sumo brings it back. Hank can see the bright red of his LED through the rain and wishes desperately to just march out there and soothe it back to blue.

But he can’t. He doesn’t. Sara is glaring holes into the back of his head and there’s no way he’s getting out of this without at least another two hours of arguing.

Because that’s all she wants to do. She came here angry about the interview, spitting curses and more than fit to be tied about seeing Connor here. He could deal with her feelings about the interview - even he fucking hated it, it took Connor away from him at work for God’s sake - but this?

“You can’t seriously be this fuckin’ pissed over Connor,” he hisses after a while.

He hears Sara get up from the table, her sneakers squeaking across the hardwood as she turns to face him. “Why the hell not?” she snaps back. “Of all the people - no. Of all the  _ things _ to start a relationship with -“

“Him,” Hank grits out. He turns, pinning a hard stare on her even as she glares just as hard back. “His name is  _ Connor,  _ Sara. I know what I said when Cole died. But things change.”

Sara scoffs. “Please. You wanted that android’s head a silver platter. I still do. She killed our son, Hank.”

“She did what she was programmed to do. She didn’t have help from the presiding surgeon and failed when her programming wouldn’t allow her to improvise. It’s not her fault. It’s not  _ his.” _

Connor chooses that moment to interrupt. His head peers around the corner of the hallway, his hair and clothes sopping wet, water dripping down his face and off his chin to patter against the floor. His brown hair is black now, waterlogged as it is - his brown eyes are equally as dark, empty of all emotion as his LED flashes red.

“Would it be alright if I used towels to dry Sumo before letting him in? He’s muddy,” Connor says. 

“Yeah,” Hank says at the same time Sara says “No.” Hank turns a glare on her, insides twisting again as Connor flinches at Sara’s tone. 

“Yes,” Hank repeats. He looks back at Connor, softening his expression. He pushes past Sara and urges Connor into the bathroom, yanking a pile of towels out of the linen cabinet just inside the door and holding them out for his android. He takes one off the pile and drapes it over Connor’s hair, scrubbing for a few seconds until he elicits a small smile. Hank smiles back, ignoring the scoff from Sara behind them in the hall. “There’s that smile.”

_ Everything is okay,  _ he wants to say.  _ This isn’t your fault. You have nothing to worry about. I’ll get this sorted and we can sit down and watch stupid romcoms just like you wanted. _

He doesn’t say any of that. He wishes he were wearing the interface so he could just push all those feelings through and have Connor understand. He wishes that they could go back to this morning, Connor’s lean weight stretched against him, all soft smiles and softer kisses. The serenity of this morning feels so far away that it’s hard to reconcile the pure joy on Connor’s face while he’d kissed Connor stupid to the dreary, wet mess he is now.

“I’ll dry him in the garage,” Connor murmurs, his eyes dead but knowing. That little smile doesn’t disappear, but he does hide it in the drape of the towel as he retreats. Hank watches him go before turning back to Sara, resigned.

“Why did you really come here,” he says flatly.

Sara blinks at him. She looks behind him, peering around his shoulder to watch as the door to the laundry room swings shut behind Connor. Hank doesn’t move, keeping himself between her and the door.

“Why do you think, asshole?” she says back. Something in her eyes is different, but Hank doesn’t trust it.

There’s a reason they didn’t work out. He sees it there now, lying just under her skin, ready to burst out of her at any moment.

Contempt. Anger. Hank wonders why he’s even entertaining her when she’s so close to acting out so similarly to how she did when they split.

“Did the interview really piss you off that much?” Hank says. “I just - touched his knee, Sara. We work together. He was stressed.”

_ “It  _ works with the DPD, and is practically it’s mascot,” Sara snaps back. “How can you be okay with this after everything that’s happened?”

Hank groans. “Seriously? Are you going to justify everything by using Cole’s death as the prime example?”

“No, but I watched the news. My office isn’t too far away from one of the Cyberlife stores that got gutted. I could have been one of the victims!”

“But were you?”

Sara’s jaw snaps shut. He rolls his eyes and turns to greet Sumo as Connor lets him into the house, his fur damp but clean. He weaves between Sara’s legs, rubbing his wet dog smell all over her jeans before wiggling away to his food bowl. Connor appears after him, still dripping wet.

“He’s still a little damp,” Connor says, voice still small.

“It’s alright, Connor,” Hank replies. “Just - change out of those clothes before I feel worse about that suit getting ruined.”

And it  _ is,  _ Jesus Christ. Connor had picked out his navy blue three piece this morning and accessorized with Wilson’s quarter tie clip and a pair of plain silver cufflinks Hank no longer wore. He looked like a million bucks when they split apart and entered the precinct earlier - now he just looks sad and wet, the blue of his suit black with how waterlogged it is. 

It’s gonna take a hell of a lot of work to get it cleaned and repaired, and Hank almost hates Sara for it. Connor nods once, then turns on his heel and enters the bedroom. Hank catches streaks of mud splattering his pant legs and oxfords as he disappears behind the door.

Hank rounds on Sara, not bothering to hide the anger boiling under his skin. She meets him halfway, glaring right back.

“If this is about him,” Hank says, “we’re gonna have a  _ real  _ hard time meeting a compromise, Sara.”

“I thought I understood you, Hank,” Sara says. Her expression drops, turning almost pleading. “But being on the side of these -  _ things?  _ Did you see what they did to Capitol Park? To downtown Detroit during the uprising?”

“Sara, I was there!” Hank shouts. His anger boils over - he barely hears the door behind him opening as he raises his voice. “I watched all that shit fucking happen! I was led by fucking  _ gunpoint  _ by Connor’s evil clone to Cyberlife Tower where both of us nearly died! I drove through the entire fucking evacuation just to make sure that fucking android behind me didn’t get  _ shot!” _

Sumo whines in the silence as his voice rings through the house. He hears Connor shift behind him, but he doesn’t move as he glares Sara down. She isn’t cowed - of course not - but she is embarrassed. He can see it in the blush rising to her tawny cheeks, making the freckles dusting her nose and cheeks more apparent. Hank feels a spear of pride shoot down his spine as Sara struggles to respond.

“I can go,” Connor murmurs behind him. “I don’t want to cause any more trouble for you, Hank.”

Hank sighs and rubs his forehead. “Connor, please -“

“Is it true?”

His gaze snaps to Sara. Her dark eyes aren’t on him, though - she’s staring over his shoulder at Connor. He fights the instinct to step in the way and protect him and instead moves to the side, carefully turning around to measure Connor’s reaction.

Connor is not a small man by any means - he’s six feet and two hundred pounds of pure processing power, a walking, talking, free-thinking crime lab with a streak of smart humor and a heart of gold he wears on his sleeve. Hank’s seen him beat down six grown men when cornered and walked away without any damage; he’s even seen Connor hop back up after getting his thirium pump ripped out. He’s not weak, and he’s not small, but now?

He stands there in the doorway to their bedroom in one of Hank’s old Academy shirts, the grey fabric wash-soft with age and pulled taunt across his wide shoulders. The pajama pants are his own, bought from a thrift store, a dark blue patterned with white stags racing across at an angle. He’s hunched and his expression is pinched, LED flashing red, meek and small and everything he shouldn’t be. 

Hank hates it. Hates Sara. Connor stares at her like she might bite him, his hands wringing the hem of his shirt. The logo of the Academy and the year printed under it doesn’t go unnoticed by Sara, but she smartly doesn’t comment as Connor squirms under her stare.

Hank is fed up with it. “He’s not a fucking mind reader,” he snaps at her. Sara glares at him. 

“Is it true that you can feel?” she clarifies, uninciating each syllable like Connor is a child to be talked down to.

Connor’s eyes get sharper at that. Hank recognizes the flash of anger in those brown eyes, the tenseness of his shoulders indicating high stress. Hank wants to bundle him away, comfort him and hug him and kiss him, but he doesn’t. He lets Connor work through his irritation on his own.

“I can feel,” Connor says eventually. “I  _ do _ feel. I don’t - I don’t know why I need to justify that to you.”

Sara’s eye twitches. Hank snorts and shakes his head.

“I get shot and I feel it,” Connor continues. He straightens, gaining back his confidence. “I’ve been - I’ve died, and felt it. I feel fear, and pain and loss and heartbreak. I feel happiness and joy and… everything in between.”

Hank bites the inside his cheek as something in Connor’s expression changes. He looks at Hank, searching, his face softening; Hank feels an involuntary flush burn up his neck.

“I’ve fallen in love,” Connor says softly. His eyes never leave Hank, those eyes that are nothing but specialized cameras with incredibly sensitive optics behind them, but Hank loves them anyway. “I’ve fallen in love and known what pure bliss is like and I don’t want to lose that. Being thought of as a machine - I am one, but I’m more than that. Just like you’re more than just what your genetics make you.”

Hank looks to Sara, and is stunned at the bewildered expression on her face. She glances between the two of them, at Connor’s barely concealed doe eyes and Hank’s blush heating his face, and nods. She swallows, looking around the room, fidgeting with her hair.

“Right,” she says softly. “Right, I… I’m sorry. For all the things I said.”

Connor catches Hank’s stare. There’s confusion there, but Connor is a bleeding heart - he turns to Sara and nods, accepting her apology.

“Thank you,” he says. 

She dips her chin. “I’m sorry we met like this.”

Connor breathes a little laugh. “Yeah, well. Sometimes it’s better to air all the dirty laundry in the beginning to get it out of the way.”

“Speaking of,” Hank says. He raises a brow at Connor, then looks pointedly at the bedroom. “The suit okay?”

Connor lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “The dry cleaning bill is going to be pretty big, but the shoes are worse.”

Sara winces. “I’m sorry about that, too.”

“It’s alright,” Connor says. He visibly droops, LED cycling from a calm blue to yellow. “I need to run some… extensive diagnostics. I’ll see you in the morning?”

He looks to Hank, and Hank nods.  _ I’m tired,  _ he means, and isn’t that a trip? Cyberlife’s most expensive prototype, capable of preconstructing entire crime scenes and housing flops of processing power in just his rudimentary CPUs scattered across his body -  _ tired.  _

“Yeah, Connor,” Hank says, a smile in his voice and on his face. He looks forward to spooning up alongside him, his warm skin and soft touch a balm to this already fucked-up day. “Sleep well.”

Connor turns with a small smile and drifts into the bedroom. He opens the door enough so Sumo can nose in if he wants to, and shuts off the light. Sara opens her mouth to speak - Hank holds up a finger, shushing her.

_ “RK800 serial number 313 248 317 dash 51 entering stasis,”  _ a female voice says, drifting out into the hallway in a soft lilt. “ _ Estimated time of stasis at seven hours, fifteen minutes. Applying software repairs and memory upload. Shutting down…” _

“Okay,” Hank says. “Go ahead.”

Sara pins him with a glare. “You’re  _ actually  _ dating him? I thought I was reading into things!”

Hank groans. He pushes past her and yanks open the fridge, pulling out two beers. He collapses at the kitchen table and slides one of the cans across to her. “Sara, please.”

“Hank.”

He looks up at her, but instead of the anticipated glare, she’s smiling. It doesn’t really reach her eyes, but he knows real happiness on her face when he sees it.

“I’m happy for you,” she says quietly. “I know how I acted doesn’t really say that, but - I’m glad that you’ve moved on. We both tortured each other enough.”

Hank snorts, but he can feel his cheeks warming despite it. She sits across from him and cracks open the beer, clicking their cans together before taking a hearty drink. He does so as well, sipping instead of draining it all in one go - he’s not interested in going to bed drunk, now. No matter how much he wants to fall into that pit of oblivion, the hurt look on Connor’s face in the morning just isn’t worth it.

They sit in silence like that, listening to the rain patter against the house and Sumo’s light snoring in the living room. It’s barely past two in the afternoon but Hank already feels tired, and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. He wishes he could just shut off like Connor, turn everything in his brain down to a dull hum so he can get some peace and quiet. Maybe then he wouldn’t feel like drinking himself under the table to dull his senses to get some fucking rest.

He drops his hands and looks across the table at Sara’s more apologetic expression, even as some amusement still dances their in her eyes. He raises a brow at her, feeling his own scowl cross his face.

“He means a lot to me, you know,” he says. “I hated his fuckin’ guts at first, but… he’s grown a lot. I didn’t believe in any of this android shit either until he showed up. They’re people, Sara. More than most humans.”

Sara takes a contemplative drink of her beer. She glances over her shoulder as Sumo noses into the bedroom, the door drifting open to let in the light from the hallway. Hank moves to get up and close it but she shakes her head, quietly rising from her chair instead and closing the door with a soft click. He stares at her as she returns to her seat, something soft there in her eyes that he hasn’t seen since Cole was a baby.

“I get it,” she says. She grimaces then, shaking her head a bit. “I mean, not all of it, but I get it. He’s sweet. Those eyes are…  _ scary _ deep.”

Hank snorts. “Yeah. Real good at pulling the puppy face, too.”

Sara rolls her eyes. She takes a drink of her beer, suddenly contemplative. “What did that voice in there say?”

“Stasis terminal,” Hank says. “It stores memories and shit like that since his severance from Cyberlife.” He frowns, the ache of the memory coming back to him suddenly. “Had to use it already when he almost got destroyed around Christmas. It’s scary shit, but… I’m glad he has it.”

Sara blinks at him, alarmed. “What?”

Hank grimaces. “It was a case gone sideways. An android was killing and gutting other androids to get to him, then followed us here to gun him down. He barely survived reconstruction.”

“Oh,” she says. She colors, and tries to hide it behind her beer. “Fuck. Now I really feel like a bitch.”

Hank shrugs. He knows she didn’t mean much of it - at least, he hopes. They haven’t seen each other since Cole’s death and pretending to know her anymore would be too much like acknowledging what they once had, so he doesn’t. He lets her sit in her guilt and gets up to put his beer can in the recycling, suddenly feeling awkward around her presence.

He takes her can as well when she finishes, then follows him when he retreats to the living room. He’s still in the clothes he wore to work, so he sheds his coat and kicks off his shoes before reclining back in the chair near his desk. She does so as well, except she folds herself into a corner of the couch, studying him curiously as he turns on the television.

He blinks at her, and frowns. “What?” 

She shrugs a shoulder and smiles. “I just haven’t seen you in a while. You look… a lot happier.”

Hank can’t fight the blush he feels rising up his neck. He scratches his cheek and pretends it isn’t there as he flips through channels to try and settle on something while she continues to look at him.

They talk for a while after that, catching up in a way that’s close to friends who haven’t seen each other in a while. And in a way they are - their separation had been under stressful circumstances, but she had always been his friend first. She’d always been kind to him, and despite her anger streak, she’d grown to accept other people’s worldview in the time they’ve been apart.

It’s nice, in a way. To know that she’d moved on too, even if it was just growing as a person and taking pride in her job. They both needed the space to grow, and while Hank had tanked for a while, he’s still not the same heartbroken old man he was years ago.

She’d found love, too, in a fellow doctor and enthusiast for adventure. They took vacations together and just recently got back from overwintering in California when they got back to Detroit in the aftermath of the uprising. It’s been a culture shock of sorts, more for her than her new boyfriend. Hank tries not to laugh as she explains how shocked she’d been when she saw him on the news, both in candid video from Cyberlife Tower and Diana’s interview.

He’s just glad she hadn’t managed to track him down earlier. He makes a mental note to ream Jeffrey later for ratting him out so easily.

They’re so engrossed in their conversation that hours later Connor wanders out of the bedroom, startling them both into silence. His expression is sleep-soft and his dark hair is mussed like he’d been turning over during stasis - an odd thing for Cyberlife to program, though Hank is certain it’s a unique trait to deviancy instead of a string of code. Connor lets out Sumo and then moves back towards the living room, freezing when he sees Sara lounging on the couch.

“Oh,” Connor says, and as he glances at Hank, his LED flashes yellow. “I apologize. I didn’t realize you were still here.”

Sara snorts and waves her hand. This is the most relaxed Hank’s seen her - stretched out across his couch, beer in hand, her fingers curling through her hair as they’d talked. Connor hesitates and she moves her feet off the couch, freeing up the space on the other end. He sits at her insistence, curling his long legs against his chest and wrapping his arms around him.

“You sleep okay?” Hank asks softly. Connor nods, a small smile gracing his features.

“Yes,” he says. “I wrote some software updates to fix a jitter in my vision during -“ he stops, his face turning red. “Er.  _ Activities.  _ And I’m due for a thirium flush soon, so I scheduled an appointment at the precinct.”

Sara laughs, a huffing, deep sound in her throat. “ _ Activities.  _ Jesus, Hank.”

Hank glares at her. “You just got through telling me how great your new boyfriend is in bed. I know you aren’t sitting there judging  _ me.” _

“Oh, no, not judging! I just didn’t think you were into twi-“

“Please,” Connor says, his expression hard and tone put upon. Sara shuts up, smartly hiding her grin behind her hand - Hank stands and tugs Connor up, brushing a kiss against his yellow LED.

“Go back to bed,” he says quietly.  _ Run away while you can,  _ he means. “I’ll meet you in a few minutes. I promise.”

Connor nods, albeit warily, and goes back to the bedroom. Sara watches him, something like regret on her face, then turns back to Hank.

“Sorry,” she says. “I’ve really stepped in it today, haven’t I?”

Hank rubs his neck. “It’s just been hard lately. We’ve been separated at work, and he’s stuck with the most insufferable detective we have. He says Reed’s being nice, but I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Sara swishes her beer, staring at it sadly. “I think I drank too much.”

Hank sighs. “Your car doesn’t have autonomous driving?”

She winces. “Would you be mad if I said no?”

He rolls his eyes. He is mad, but no point in blowing up about it. He fetches blankets from the cabinet in the laundry room and folds them over the back of the couch, catching her bewildered stare. 

“The couch folds out,” Hank says. “Just kick Sumo off if you don’t want him slobbering all over you. He mostly listens to Connor, but he probably remembers you enough to listen.”

Sara snorts, but her expression is soft. “Thanks, Hank. I’ll get out of your hair in the morning.”

Hank shrugs. “I’m not kicking you out, but we do have work in the morning. We’ve been taking off too early too many days in a row, so we gotta pull long shifts over the weekend.”

“Sure. I’ll have breakfast ready in the morning - how about that?”

Hank huffs a laugh. “Alright. Deal.”

He lets Sumo back in and locks up the house, making sure to leave the hallway light on should Sara need to get up for the bathroom. Connor is already curled up under the comforter when Hank slides into bed, and he wraps him up further against his chest, careful to wake him up from the shallow stasis he was in before tucking his head under his chin.

“I’m sorry,” Hank murmurs into Connor’s hair. Connor shifts, their legs tangling together as he squirms closer. It’s a little uncomfortable like this with Connor’s considerable weight on one of Hank’s arms curling around his back, but he doesn’t move, making up for the argument earlier by being as close and pliant as possible.

“I’m just glad it all worked out,” Connor says. “She’s… remarkably like you, Hank.”

His tone is amused, and Hank jostles him a little for the jab. “Yeah, well. Like minds, and all that.”

Connor hums and presses impossibly closer like he’s trying to merge into Hank through osmosis. Hank settles into bed then, letting Connor manipulate the position so he’s halfway on top of Hank with his ear pressed to Hank’s sternum - his favourite way to sleep. He’s learned to love it too, even with how heavy Connor can get throughout the night, and falls asleep like that, warm and calm and very nearly peaceful.

 

——

 

He wakes to the smell of frying bacon and a warm weight pressed against his back.

It’s not uncommon for Connor to wake and make breakfast, but the body behind him is definitely not Sumo’s. There’s toned arms wrapped around his stomach and a bony nose pressed between his shoulder blades - when Hank turns, he’s greeted by a pair of soft brown eyes and a lopsided smile.

“What time is it?” Hank grumbles, turning and kissing Connor as the android lifts himself up the bed so their faces are side by side.

“Seven forty-four,” Connor says. “Sara’s been up since before five. I think she took my suit to an overnight dry cleaner.”

Hank raises a brow and lifts himself a bit to look at where Connor had left his ruined suit at. He remembers seeing it draped over the chair in the corner of the room, left to dry on a towel throughout the night as they slept, but it’s not there now. He turns back to Connor, a question on his lips that Connor kisses away.

“I heard the drone this morning,” Connor continues. “I think she’s guilty.”

“You didn’t see her come in?”

Connor shakes his head. “I went into stasis just because. I wasn’t aware the whole night.”

Hank grimaces. “Great. And now she raided our fridge.”

Connor sits up - but not without giving him a wet, languid kiss that steals Hank’s breath. His tongue is sweet like he ate a whole bag of cherries, the bitter tang of his thirium-derived saliva absent. His surprise must be evident on his face because Connor gives a stunning smile when he pulls away.

“I tasted my spit during our last interface yesterday. So I chewed a piece of gum before you woke up,” Connor says, rather triumphantly.

Hank can’t stifle a laugh as it bubbles up his throat. “Connor, that’s - seriously the cutest thing you’ve ever fuckin’ done.”

Connor continues to smile, his cheeks coloring and so proud Hank pulls him down for another kiss. The cherry taste is wearing away as Connor’s mouth naturally starts to clean itself, but Hank loves it anyway - he kisses him long after the taste is gone and the thirium returns.

He takes a quick shower after that, scrubbing his hair and trimming his beard before dressing in a less obnoxious button down over a white tee shirt. When he emerges, Connor is dressed in a downy grey pair of slacks and a darker grey blazer with a white tee shirt underneath, his expression serious as he tries to comb his hair in the reflection of the fridge.

Sara watches in amusement, barely turning to greet Hank as she sips a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. A skillet of scrambled eggs and fried potatoes sits in front of her, along with a plate of bacon on paper towels and another cup of coffee. Hank raises a brow and serves himself some breakfast while Connor continues to fuss over his hair.

“You look fine, Connor,” Hank says. Sara snorts and clucks her tongue, waving Connor over when the android turns to glare at him.

“Here, let me fix it,” Sara says. “I promise you’ll look great.”

Connor blinks, then moves to stand next to her. He bends slightly to allow Sara’s fingers through his curls - she expertly parts his hair where it naturally falls and fixes the errant curl that always drifts out if place the moment he moves. When Connor stands, his hair is perfect, and he smiles down at her.

“Thank you,” he says warmly. “That was very kind.”

She shrugs. “I wanted to see if it’s as soft as it looks. I’m glad it is.”

Connor ducks his head and smiles wider. He retreats to the living room where he starts to shower Sumo in pets, leaving Hank and Sara to finish breakfast amidst comfortable conversation.

He has to admit, Hank never thought he’d get along so well with Sara after everything. Things still hurt, sure, and trying to parse her true motives the past twelve hours nearly left him in a tailspin. But she had been his friend before everything, and he can’t find the energy to be angry with her when she’s been nothing but cordial after their initial argument.

But he is still slightly angry. She abandoned him when everything started to fall apart, and she’d been a less than stellar mother to their child. He can still remember the way she’d practically dropped all responsibility when she’d signed the papers giving him full custody, her need for her own space and life too great to even think of accomodating for the child they worked so hard to have.

There’s still bitterness there, and pain and anger and heartache. But he lets it be, smiles at her self-deprecating jokes and helps her fold the couch back up before waving her out the door. She promises to warn him before she drops by next time, and instead of correcting her - because there won’t be a next time of he can help it, especially a fuckin’  _ surprise  _ \- he just smiles and nods and watches her drive away. That last little bit of contempt for her fizzles away when he turns back inside and finds Connor inspecting the dark navy suit that had been ruined just yesterday, now pristine and clean along with his freshly scrubbed oxfords.

He supposes it’s a good thing, then, that they separated. It’s given him this - a purpose, a life now; a person he loves and cares for and would give up everything to keep safe. It sends such a bubbly, foreign, giddy feeling inside of him that he can’t resist pulling Connor into a tight hug and kissing him breathless. They’re late to work, and Jeffrey is cowed into silence by the glare Hank shoots him (because he knows Hank knows, and isn’t that a nice feeling?), but it’s all worth it.

Connor is worth it. And Hank can’t argue with that.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys are all SO FUCKING SMART and i wasnt going to post this so early but ill let you guys have this one. you all thoroughly one-upped me and im so impressed by all of you lol. i promise not to be so transparent next time, and always, i love all of you <3

The next day, Connor and Reed are given a case that requires them to split up.

A woman named Mary Wilcox and her children Sophia and Cassandra were severely beaten over the past few months before being executed in their home in the early hours of the morning, and while it’s a homicide, Hank and Ben are so logged down with their own cases that Reed and Connor are instructed to work this one in the meantime. Reed accepts only to prove that he’s “better at figuring out murder than fuckin’ Anderson is”; Connor isn’t convinced, but because Reed is more interested in talking to Mary’s husband across town than the crime scene, Connor doesn’t complain. 

He’s better with dead bodies, anyway. Even if they’re the mutilated bodies of a loving mother and her two young children.

“Do you think they fought back?” Chris says somewhere behind Connor.

Connor turns to acknowledge him, but doesn’t take his eyes off the mother. He can see bruises on her forearms and face, some defense wounds, others weeks old from the long time abuse she had suffered. There are scars there too when he kneels down to better inspect her skin, carefully pulling back her sleeves and the hem of her shirt - a long stretch of burn scars up her stomach and side, small, barely-noticeable knife marks crawling up her covered biceps, a crescent-shaped bruise under the collar that is starting to bloom purple and is suspiciously similar to the top row of someone’s teeth. He sets her clothes right again and stands, turning back to Chris.

“There are burn and knife scars that are at least three months old,” he says. Chris nods and begins to write on his holopad, the plastic nib of the pen tapping against the glass the only other sound in the bedroom. “But everything else is recent, with some of these bruises being only a couple days old. I would estimate that, along with the statements given to authorities this past year, that this has been escalating for at least ten months.”

Chris hums and continues to write. Connor tilts his head and follows a spray of blood fanning across the white carpet from its origin next to Mary’s head, stepping over her body carefully and peering under the bed where the blood trail continues.

He snaps on a pair of nitrile gloves and reaches under the skirt of the bedspread, feeling a cold piece of something metal against his palm a foot under the bed. He pulls it out, and holds it up for Chris to see. Chris turns and shouts for the photographer to come take photos of the lead pipe Connor found.

“Maybe she fought back with it?” Chris ventures.

Connor turns the pipe this way and that, then sets it down on the carpet next to a new evidence marker when the photographer rushes in to document it. “Possibly. I detect no fingerprints, but the blood on the end is hers and not her children’s. They were replacing the plumbing in the kitchen when I did a cursory sweep of the house. It’s odd that the pipe is lead, though.”

Chris grimaces. “Money problems?”

Connor does a quick search on the property - and it comes back worth $300,000, with an insurance policy worth twice that. Mary also had a well-paying job at the Detroit county child support office working as a DA. He frowns and shakes his head. “No. They made enough money to not resort to such cheap pipes. PVC would be cheaper than this. But I also show no records of her calling a repairman to fix it.”

“Not all women are incompetent at fixing a kitchen sink,” the photographer says, her expression wounded.

Connor fixes an apologetic look on her. “Yes, but her bank history shows that she regularly called repairman for problems, and recently had a company here to redo the plumbing under the house for a problem in the water lines feeding the washing machine.”

The photographer gives him a withering look, but doesn’t respond. Connor dips his head and steps out, returning to the living room where the bodies of Mary’s children lie on the couch, executed with a large caliber handgun instead of beaten to death like their mother.

It’s evidence enough for Connor to suspect the father without a reasonable doubt. The children have bruises and cuts that suggest abuse too, but being shot instead of beaten shows an emotional connection that prevented whoever did this from abusing them in their last moments. There’s no signs of rage or contempt here - only pain and sadness and heartache. A father destroying what he had created because he didn’t want to leave witnesses.

Chris follows in behind him, his expression pained as he glances over the two little bodies perched on the couch, their heads thrown back from a single bullet hole in each of their foreheads. Blood splatters climb the wall along with skull fragments and grey matter behind the couch, but otherwise it looks like they just fell asleep while watching television, a remote sitting between them and the t.v. tuned to a cartoon channel currently running commercials for toys.

Connor examines the bodies the best he can without disturbing them. Sophia seems to have been shot first, because her sister is positioned in a way like she was taken by surprise. Her legs are bunched up under her like she meant to spring away, and her arms are flopped in her lap as if she were holding them up in terror before getting shot. There’s bruises on their arms and legs as well, and on Cassandra - ten years old, the oldest of the two, with Sophia being six - there’s fingerprint bruises on her hips, indicative to rape.

“No way,” Chris says behind him. Connor frowns and drops Cassandra’s shirt, turning to face his friend.

“Rape? A little girl?” Chris continues. His face is visibly pained, and Connor knows he’s thinking of Damien. “Connor, who could do this?”

He knows who. The father. He sends Reed a quick text detailing his suspicions, then meets Chris’ dark eyes.

“The children were killed quickly, whereas their mother was beat to death,” Connor says. “This was an emotionally-fuelled killing, but the children were spared from a beating and from witnessing their mother’s death. So I think it’s safe to assume this might have been the father.”

Chris nods and swallows thickly. He doesn’t respond as he makes the notes, looking particularly sick as he does so. Connor steps back next to him as the coroner arrives and moves to start on the children.

But instead of ignoring Connor - like most of the forensic teams tend to do at crime scenes - this coroner smiles at him and dips his chin in greeting as he puts on gloves and kneels in front of Cassandra’s body. Connor tilts his head, meeting his eyes, and tries not to show his surprise on his face.

“No Hank this time around?” the coroner says. Connor raises his brow and the coroner laughs, turning back to the bodies. “Sorry. I’ve worked on your cases a couple times, and I’m used to seeing Hank here and talking to him as I do this. Is he not working with you anymore?”

Chris tosses him a concerned look. Connor grimaces and stuffs his hands in his pockets to stop himself from fidgeting.

“Hank and I have different partners for the moment,” Connor explains. “I’m working with Reed for the time being. He’s a good detective, but…”

The coroner laughs. “Yeah, I get it. Kind of a jackass if you ask me.”

Chris snorts. Connor bobs his head and sweeps the living room, thinking the conversation is over until the coroner clears his throat and catches Connor’s attention again.

“My name’s Ethan,” the coroner says. He laughs then, amused at something that Connor doesn’t get. Connor tilts his head and meets Chris’ eyes across the room.

“It’s nice to meet you. I’m Connor,” Connor says. 

“Yeah, I know. That’s why I laughed,” Ethan says, a laugh still in his voice. Connor continues to stare, and Ethan squirms, barely able to meet Connor’s eyes.

Strange. He’s a young man, in his early thirties with two children in high school. Divorced, on good terms with his ex-wife, his file says. Connor looks away, back towards the rest of the room, noting another spray of blood near the mouth of the hallway that he catalogues and places an evidence marker next to. 

“I just, uh,” Ethan continues. “Get nervous around cute guys. Sorry.”

Connor freezes on his way back to the bedroom. He turns around to see Ethan look him up and down, his dark eyes sticking to Connor’s hands and shoulders and groin. 

Oh.  _ Oh.  _ Connor looks away, purposefully breaking eye contact and hardening his expression. He means to turn away and continue on with his investigation, but Ethan clears his throat. His expression is apologetic when Connor looks back at him; Chris is hiding his smile behind his holopad.

“Sorry,” Ethan says. “I didn’t think - I don’t want to assume, but if you don’t swing that way -“

Connor sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Please. This is a crime scene. May we continue working?”

God, he misses Hank. Ethan nods shortly and turns back to the bodies, resuming his work. Connor can barely restrain his annoyance as Chris laughs at him silently, and he knows without checking that his LED is red.

“Gottem,” Chris mouths, and Connor turns his glare on him. Chris manages to keep in a snort but only just - he has to turn away and disguise a peal of laughter as a cough when Ethan turns back around brandishing the television remote.

“Would you mind running this for prints?” Ethan asks. His voice is small and quiet, and Connor has to fight not to roll his eyes as he takes the remote from him.

“I already did,” Connor says. He sets the remote back down, meeting Ethan’s eyes pointedly. “I also scanned for prints in the rest of the house. I catalogued many from the mother and children, naturally, and some suspicious prints from the father on what I suspect is the murder weapon. But this,” he taps the remote, perhaps harder than necessary because the channel flips to some news station as he does, “is clean.”

Ethan grimaces. “Right. Of course you did. I didn’t mean to imply -“

“Connor.”

He turns at the insistent tone of Chris’ voice, barely able to keep his own annoyed frown from pulling at his mouth. But Chris isn’t looking at him, and he’s also not trying to cover his laughter from just moments earlier - instead he’s staring at the television, brown eyes wide, an expression of shock on his face.

Connor turns all the way around. He blinks at the television screen. If he had a stomach, it’d be plummeting straight to the center of the Earth.

It’s him. And Hank. Or rather, photographs of the two of them, grainy from how zoomed in they are and the yellow light of the hallway light the photographer took them from. He’s hovering over Hank, a smile on his face and LED bright blue while Hank’s hand is reaching up to cradle the back of his head. The photos click by in quick succession before they’re kissing, long and languid like they had this morning. Early morning light breaks through the seam of the curtains behind them, making it indisputable who they are and where they are.

Connor recognizes instantly who could have taken these. Other officers are gathering around, watching in horror or curiosity, Connor doesn’t know. He only regains his ability to move when the slideshow ends on a candid of the two of them walking into work, side by side, their hands brushing together as Connor’s skin peels away where their fingers touch. 

_ “Our suspicions of a relationship between the deviant android known as Connor and Lieutenant Anderson of the DPD were confirmed this morning by these photos taken by an anonymous citizen,”  _ the news anchor says. But she’s not an anchor - Connor recognizes the logo in the corner of the screen as a local talk show slash tabloid. These people are  _ paparazzi. “While the location of where these photographs is unknown, it’s obvious that the DPD has a bias to android concerns, especially the precinct where the android and Lieutenant work. We confirmed that they are currently working different cases after the vandalism sustained at their station several days ago, but is the separation a protective measure for the android, or a PR stunt to distance the DPD from supporting android rights?” _

Connor feels himself heat up as all eyes of the surrounding officers turn on him. He recognizes some of their faces, most friendly and cordial to him at work, even going so far as to offer condolences after his near permanent destruction last month. Now their eyes stare at him in surprise - and he doesn’t know of that’s worse than abject disgust.

“Connor,” Chris says again. Connor manages to snap his jaw shut from where it was hanging once Chris lays a comforting hand on his shoulder. Chris smiles at him, but it’s sad and concerned. “Connor, let’s go outside. Turn that off.”

Ethan scrambles and turns off the television with a click of a button on the remote. Chris steers Connor outside, weaving through the forensics team loitering on the lawn to his own cruiser parked down the street.

“Wait, the crime scene,” Connor protests as he’s shoved inside the passenger seat.

Chris shakes his head and slams the door. He gets in the other side and starts the car, turning down the radio chatter before pulling off the curb. “We’re going to your place. Pick up Sumo and some clothes for you and Hank when we do.”

Connor blinks in confusion. “Where are you taking me afterward?”

“Captain Fowler. But I won’t let you stay at home when there’s -“ He flaps his hand, frowning as he searches for words. “When there’s intimate information out there on you.”

Connor doesn’t argue. He feels surprisingly calm, though he supposes that’s the panic still trying to work through his systems at the shock of everything. Sara had taken those pictures. Connor hadn’t even realized the door was cracked open. When had that happened? How did he not notice her hovering there as he kissed Hank this morning? How did she get them to a tabloid so fucking  _ quickly? _

And why would she  _ do this? _

His head swirls with these kinds of questions as Chris pulls up to their house and helps him wrangle Sumo into the car. Connor packs a suitcase of Hank’s clothes and toiletries, nabbing the bare minimum for himself before packing the stasis terminal on top of everything and zipping it up. He locks the house and tosses the suitcase in the trunk along with Sumo’s food, then gets back into the car. 

The precinct is an absolute madhouse when they pull up. Instead of going through the front entrance, where less than pleased crowds and several news trucks wait, Chris and Connor slip through the underground entrance connecting the DPD parking structure to the precinct’s basement. Nothing is down here except the forensics lab and evidence locker, so they go largely unnoticed until they have to swipe their badges at the gate on the main floor leading to the bullpen.

The bullpen itself is relatively calm compared to outside, but Connor can hear Hank’s raised voice yelling in Fowler’s office as Chris leads him around the back end of the main floor. People stare at Connor, and when he glances around, every single screen in the precinct is playing the same tabloid news he saw back at the crime scene.

Hot shame rushes up and colors his face. He tries to override it, but it’s one of the “perks” of being deviant - uncontrollable autonomous reactions. An error pops up instead, and he shoves it away as his coworkers continue to follow him with their eyes as he enters Fowler’s office.

“Connor!” Hank shouts, and whips around to pull him into a crushing hug. Connor wants to push him away, reinstitute space between them, but Fowler’s office is fogged and the only other people in the room are Gavin and Chris. He hugs Hank back, then steps away as Hank looks him up and down.

“You okay? Did they do anything to you?” Hank says. 

Connor frowns. “We went through the back. No one saw us.”

Hank visibly relaxes. “Okay, good.” He lets him go, then, and Connor mourns the loss even as he wants the space. Hank looks just as pained, though there’s anger there, too. Hot and rabid, and he pins it all on Fowler.

Fowler raises his hands. “Hank, please. I know. I shouldn’t have told her where you lived. But she said she wanted photos -“

“She sure as fuck wanted photos!” Hank snaps. Fowler flinches - it’s the first time Connor’s seen him effectively cowed. It makes him feel uneasy. “She got exactly what she wanted! And  _ you  _ led her there!”

“Hank,” Connor says, keeping his tone low and soothing. He reaches out and grips Hank’s shoulder. “Please. It’s just - it’s just a PR stunt. If we come out with a statement, everything will be alright.”

Hank reigns in his anger, though he speaks through his teeth like it’s barely breaking the surface. “We shouldn’t have to, Connor. This isn’t a fuckin’ - a  _ scandal.  _ There aren’t any fraternization rules.”

“But this isn’t a normal relationship. I’m not human.”

Hank makes a strangled noise at the same time the door to Fowler’s office opens. Connor steps back from Hank, putting a good four feet of space between them, but the person rushing in is familiar. His panic dissolves as Markus quietly closes the door and rushes to Connor’s side.

“I saw the news,” he says. Markus looks frantic, like he ran here from wherever he had been prior. He reaches out to interface but Connor snatches his hand away, feeling that same panic rising up his throat. Markus softens his expression, his hand still extended. “It’s alright. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“I am,” Connor says, though he doesn’t feel it. Markus frowns but retracts his hand - the others watch on in concern, Hank’s eyes sadder than everyone else’s.

Fowler wrenches control back, crossing his arms and leaning against the edge of his desk. “Well, regardless whether you like it or not, something needs to be said.” 

He looks pointedly at Hank. Hank growls, his hands wringing his hair and his back tensing as he paces the office. Connor watches, feeling the tug to hug him and comfort him, a feeling he fights back down. Markus and Chris watch on in concern; Reed stands with his arms crossed, watching Hank and Connor both, eyes flicking between them and Connor’s LED.

After a few moments, Hank sighs. “Fuck. Fine,” he grits out. “Fine! But only if you pursue a criminal case against Sara.”

Fowler inclines his head. “I can’t guarantee any outcome, but it’s the least I can do.” He looks at Connor, raising a brow. “Do you feel comfortable sharing your memory from last night and this morning?”

Connor nods. Countless people are going to see their intimacy up close if he does, analyzing it along with Sara’s behaviour, but it’s no different than what they’re seeing now. They didn’t have sex - didn’t even dress in front of each other - so Connor takes this small mercy while he can.

Fowler reaches behind him and picks up a secure DPD tablet. He holds it out and Connor logs the memory from last night into its own file and uploads it as evidence. Fowler nods at him in thanks and logs it away before setting the tablet aside.

“In the meantime,” Fowler continues, “you’re both still assigned different partners. I’ll cordone off your house and post a security detail if you want to stay, but I suggest staying somewhere else. Sara could reappear or have surveillance at the house that you don’t know about.”

Connor feels dizzy. He didn’t normally scan for things like that, but Sara didn’t seem capable of this. Of any of this. He opens his mouth to say so and Hank shakes his head, cutting him off.

“She’s cruel, Connor,” Hank says, apologetic. “We’ve only been separated for six years. She’s more than capable of holding a grudge that long.”

He swallows and nods. He accepts Markus’ comfort then, a shallow interface that Markus floods with a calm that Connor has a hard time absorbing. Markus steps away when he and Hank are instructed to write a statement, but his presence is enough to set Connor at ease once it’s sent away to be announced by the DPD social relations department.

“Might as well just announce to the world that we fuck,” Hank mumbles as they follow Chris back out to the parking structure. Reed and Markus follow them quietly, their footsteps echoing down the basement tunnel connecting the two buildings.

Connor feels ugly resentment clambering up his throat. He can’t stop himself when he speaks next, something inside him itching to be let out and preventing him from examining what he wants to say before saying it.

“We practically did,” he snaps. “‘We have been engaged in an intimate relationship for two months. While it does not affect our work or show favoritism towards androids, this is a relationship between an android and human, and that may be mistaken as bias.’”

“I really don’t want to think about you guys fucking,” Reed grumbles.

Chris snorts. “I don’t see the problem. This could help us, if people got their heads out of their asses.”

“Lawmakers could care less about this, but I would be careful,” Markus says. They all gather around Chris’ cruiser, turning to face Markus as he continues to speak. “I’ll go and make a statement as well in support. New Jericho needs to be back in a positive light after everything - this isn’t as bad as it looks. I promise.”

“It helps your old lady did this without your consent,” Reed muses. 

Hank pins him with a glare. “You’re awfully chipper about that.”

Reed shrugs. “I’m an asshole, but not even you guys deserve this. Though it was awfully ballsy of her to come out with this so fast.”

Connor rubs his face. “Can we please just… return to work?”

He doesn’t want to think about this anymore. He just wants to work, wants to drown his thoughts away with statistics and evidence before he explodes. Everything is too much all at once, and when he tries to drag in a staggering breath, he ends up choking on it instead.

“Easy,” Hank says. He’s suddenly all around Connor, warm arms and warm lips, bundling Connor up against Hank’s chest.

He doesn’t fight it anymore. He squeezes his arms around Hank’s shoulders, burying his face in the rough wool of his jacket collar. He desperately wants to go back to their house now, wants to disappear into Hank’s easy morning embrace and the safety of their bed. But even that isn’t safe anymore, and before he can stop it, he feels tears start to well at the corners of his eyes.

“I’ll go finish up at the scene,” he hears Reed say. Hank nods, murmuring a thank you, and then he hears Reed’s retreating footsteps and the sound of his car starting. Hank’s warm hands continue to rub up Connor’s back, stopping every so often to trace circles between his shoulder blades, his lips still pressed to Connor’s neck as Connor shoves his face further into Hank’s shoulder.

“Let’s just get you guys home,” Chris says, soft and caring. “Damien would love to see you again.”

Connor perks up at that. Hank wipes his tears away with a swipe of his thumb, smiling at him sadly but not letting him go.

“I won’t let her destroy what you have,” Hank says. “What  _ we  _ have. I promise.”

Connor nods. He untangles himself from Hank and turns to Markus, who also smiles gently.

“I’ll stop by later so you can read my statement,” he says. “Everyone is pretty concerned, so I’ll go talk to Simon and the others before returning.”

Chris gives him a wave. “Check in with the security detail. I requested one on my street, too.”

Markus nods. “Of course. I’ll go through the proper channels.”

He squeezes Connor’s hand again, sending a faint feeling of comfort through their connection before letting go. Connor barely gets out a goodbye before Hank gets him into the cruiser, bundling him up in the uncomfortable back seat behind the safety of the tinted glass, shoving Sumo to the front seat next to Chris to make room. He shields Connor’s vision from the throngs of people outside the precinct by turning his face against his chest, his rough fingers gentle through Connor’s hair, petting him and soothing. Connor allows it and falls into a shallow stasis on the drive to Chris’ house - the last shred of rest he’ll get for weeks to come.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i apologize for the delay - i got suddenly sick and laid in bed for a couple days suffering. i left you all in connor whump limbo, but hopefully this tides you all over!

“Hey, are you that android from t.v.?”

Connor stops at the sound of the voice behind him. His entire body freezes, joints and motors throughout his bodh locking up as he was reaching to open the door to the cold case in front of him. The only thing inside him that keeps moving is his thrumming heartbeat, a staccato that suddenly feels too fast and loud in the low chatter of the grocery store around him.

He’s not alone, though. A family of four - two men, married, one with two DUI tickets and the other with a fifteen year old track record in and out of juvie; both children are adopted, a boy and girl, two perfect little heads of brown curly hair and sweet voices that Connor catches even down the aisle. His sensors catch several others in the aisle just one over, but no one besides the people behind him are paying him any mind.

Everything inside him screams for him to keep moving, to just pick up what he needs and  _ go,  _ but he turns around anyway and fixes the owner of the voice with a small smile. A mistake, he will realize later. 

_ Easy. Relax. They won’t hurt you. _

The voice in the back of his head is Hank’s. He wishes Hank were here right now.

“Yes,” Connor says politely. The woman who said his name steps closer, three other girls and an older man following her as she does. They look roughly college-aged, and his scans return no identities - no records, then. Not even traffic tickets. Connor tries not to feel trapped as they nearly corner him against the cold case of ice cream behind him.

Not maliciously, though. Not yet, anyway. There’s a good four feet of space between him and them, but it doesn’t make him feel any better as their eyes rake him up and down. One of the girls, at least, seems disinterested as she plays with her phone while leaning over the handle of their shopping cart.

The woman who spoke - five foot three, short black hair, blue eyes and a septum piercing that had been done three times because it got infected the first two and left scar tissue - ventures closer like he’s a zoo animal caged for display. She reaches out almost like she wants to touch him and he takes a step back, drawing up to his full height and somehow managing to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

“Woah, you’re a lot prettier up close,” she says. “Those freckles are crazy.”

“He’s an android, Lexi,” another girl drawls. Five foot four, long black hair tied back in a bun, possible heart condition and a silver medical band dangling from her thin wrist as she moves to flick her fingers at him. “Probably programmed to find old men attractive.”

Connor’s smile melts away. So they did recognize him from the photos. Dread settles cold and heavy in his stomach, a coiling around his processors that leaves him near motionless again. The comment must have the desired effect because they smile like he walked right into their trap. 

“What’s it feel like, fucking an old dude?” the second girl continues. Connor is suddenly reminded of how  _ cruel  _ humans can be, and wishes desperately he could unlock the rest of his body so he could run. But his systems refuse to budge, frozen in place and unresponsive when he tries to override everything at once. That dread settles deeper and colder, morphing into fear as it grips around his spine.

He somehow finds his voice again (it never went away, it was just a synthesized sound from a myriad of flexible speakers housed in his artificial larynx, but it still felt lost as Connor floundered to determine an appropriate reaction) and clears his throat.

“I - don’t see how this is relevant,” Connor stutters out. He doesn’t want to be here. He  _ shouldn’t  _ be here. Hank said to let it alone, that comfort food could wait until Naomi went grocery shopping with her mother later -

“Aw, it’s scared,” the older gentleman says. Connor switches his attention back to him and backs up a step when the man moves forward, hand outstretched to poke him in the nose. The man does, but not without stretching across the distance  Connor puts between them. “Do you think it can blush?”

“I dunno, Jared said those sex bots do,” the first girl says. “You’re supposed to be a prototype, right? Like an early release sort of thing?”

That fear grips him tighter. How do these people know that? It was no secret what he was when he was initially released by Cyberlife - a prototype police investigation android was the hottest thing on the news before the revolution really kicked up. Connor remembers hearing it on the precinct’s television in the break room more than once during that fateful week, his existence met with both wariness and excitement over what such an advanced android could do for its human counterparts.

But despite that, he suddenly feels like his whole life is under a microscope. Now, he is no longer Connor, the android willingly employed by Detroit Police to help bring justice to human and android alike - he is now Connor, that police android that overstepped its bounds by going deviant and deciding love was not outside his skill set.

It’s sickening. Heartbreaking, that he is being scrutinized for such a thing. A thing so ingrained and revered in human culture that  _ not  _ finding love - even just a physical representation of it - was akin to near social suicide and isolation. People were supposed to find love - it’s what nearly drove everything, now. Find love, find eternal happiness; you won’t be alone anymore if someone just  _ loved  _ you.

But Connor had.  _ Has.  _ He has that - has found his personal slice of heaven. 

And now it’s a thing to be gawked at. Look at this silly android as it falls in  _ love  _ \- what does it think it’s doing?

“I would prefer to finish my shopping and return home,” Connor finally croaks out. The faces around him startle, as if hearing his voice is somehow only supposed to happen on command. “I am not taking questions about the photos of me released without my knowledge of consent. Have a good evening.”

He moves to slip between them, barely managing not to touch either of the other two girls as he squeezes himself out of the situation on quick feet. They barely manage to get two words in edgewise before he’s practically running out of the grocery store without half of the things he went there for. But his heart is hammering too hard in his chest to care (181 beats per minute, hummingbird-quick, too fast to appropriately cool his subsystems and hardware as he races out into the sleet of rain to the waiting cruiser in the parking lot. Too much, too fast, not enough, error error error.) Fear still grips his throat and spine, chilling him deeper and quicker than the rain does as it soaks through his clothes. 

He returns, soaking wet and nearly empty handed, panting like he needs to breathe and trembling like the cold actually bothers him. It does, somehow, even though his body temperature is a steady seventy-seven - but it bothers Hank more when Connor eventually works up the strength to come inside and face the music.

But there is no music. Hank isn’t angry. At least, not at him. Chris and Naomi are concerned, too, and help him out of his soaked clothes so they can be washed and dried before anything else of his gets irreparably ruined from the weather. Hank goes on a long, muttered tangent about  _ personal safety  _ and  _ you shouldn’t have gone on your own _ , but Connor only half listens - a part of himself is stuck back in that grocery store, the memory replaying itself over and over and over again, combing through it for every last detail.

The other people in the aisle didn’t even seem to notice him. Didn’t even seem to care that he was being cornered and interrogated it. He had been so utterly alone that short of shouting for help would get him nowhere, especially against four humans who probably knew how to turn the situation in their favor. He was  _ malfunctioning  _ \- he attacked first - they went to ask him a question and he suddenly turned and wrapped his hand around the first girl’s throat and  _ squeezed - _

“You’re alright,” Hank says, suddenly a lot closer than Connor remembers. They’re in bed, somehow, tangled in each other under the sheets as Hank settles down to sleep. Connor checks his internal clock and almost chokes on an unneeded breath when he finds out he lost two whole hours between now and when he got home.

“I’m sorry,” Connor says instead. There’s nothing else for him to say. Guilt overrides everything else, and when Hank takes him in his arms more gently, the feeling doesn’t disappear.

“Just relax. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

He wants to believe Hank. Wants to believe that none of this is happening because he didn’t decide to go into stasis when he didn’t need it. Wants to believe that he didn’t want the simple comfort of sleeping next to the man he loves just to feel the weight of him around him, the human weight and warmth of a man who still sometimes found it hard to show any affection at all but gave it out willingly anyway. Connor loves him so much that it’s hard  _ not  _ to blame himself, now - hard not to tear himself down when all of this could have been avoided if he’d just been more careful.

Hank doesn’t let him wallow in his guilt for very long, though Connor lets him believe that for a while until the other man is asleep. He lets Hank run his hands over his body, lets him dip beneath the sheets to suck him down in the warm heat of his mouth. Connor has to clap a hand over his mouth so he doesn’t wail when Hank presses two fingers inside him and presses against that spot that always sends his systems fraying at the edges, code unwinding and processes nearly halting in place where they write themselves. Hank knows just where to lick and prod, knows by now all the places that melt Connor into a boneless heap against the pillows. His self-satisfied smile when he emerges is enough to let Hank believe everything is alright until he’s fast asleep and the rest of the house is quiet; only then does he allow the guilt to flood back, so cold compared to Hank’s warm body around him that he nearly cries because of it.

But he doesn’t. He lays there in the dark, curled into Hank’s chest, body still slightly singing from his orgasm an hour earlier but quickly sloughing away for the fear and anger to replace it. Anger at himself, fear for Hank - it all melts together as he tunes his hearing and scanners to encompass the whole house, determined to miss nothing even if he must catalogue everything.

He doesn’t rest. He pretends to when Hank starts to stir, hiding his LED against the pillows to fool him further. It works, for a time.

But only just.

 

——

 

When it happens again, Connor is a bit more prepared.

“Can I help you?” he asks blandly. 

The older couple in front of him jerk back around and pretend like they haven’t been not-so-discreetly staring at him for the past two minutes. The man - Jeremy Sutton, seventy-eight, a clean driving record but a plethora of juvenile stints and one count of arson following him even now in his old age - glances back over his shoulder, raking his eyes back up Connor’s figure like he’s poised to strike instead of standing in line waiting for his turn like everyone else.

This time, Connor doesn’t hide the irritation coloring his tone. “I said, can I help you? Or are you going to stare at me without asking me what you want to ask?”

Jeremy’s heart rate picks up and his wife - unknown, no record, but her eyes are a nice soft brown and Connor doesn’t feel threatened by her - smacks him in the shoulder. “It’s rude to stare,” she hisses, and the irony isn’t lost on her husband. He rolls his eyes and turns more fully to look Connor in the eye.

Suddenly, the conversations around them stop as the old man pins Connor with a glare. Connor is suddenly struck with the odd realization that this is the second time he’s being pinned in a grocery store, and he wonders if he should just hand off all shopping privileges to Chris altogether to avoid the issue. It gets him more trouble than he asks for, even if it’s the one thing he can do for his friends that doesn’t inconvenience them as much as inconveniences him.

He doesn’t eat, after all. But Naomi is busy with Damien and Chris and Hank are pulling double shifts just to get work done while Connor is ordered - in no uncertain terms - to stay home and do nothing. 

Which makes him antsy. So going out to fetch things is the only thing he can do while Fowler waits to stick him back on a case.

The old man stares. Connor sighs and stares back, wishing he were anywhere but here. 

Preferably with Hank. On a beach somewhere, or on a cruise. Or somewhere quiet like a cabin in the mountains where Connor can still maintain satellite connection. Just anywhere that wasn’t  _ here _ .

“Do you love him?”

Connor’s thought processes come to a screeching halt. He glances back down at the old man, his expression probably somewhere between confusion and bewilderment that’s mirrored on Jeremy’s wife’s face. She glances around them like some of the others in line might bite them, but all Connor finds when he follows her gaze is just curious eavesdroppers, not even pretending to hide how they turn slightly to listen.

Fowler instructed him not to answer any questions. It wasn’t his place, even if this was about him and his personal life. He was to remain staunchly silent on the issue while the DPD worked out a PR path to deal with what the public is calling  _ favoritism  _ to androids - and to Connor, in particular. His fast track to detective had been made subsequently public after Sara’s rather prompt release of her photos, and that - along with the concept of an android being in love and in a physical relationship with a human as a public servant - had raised questions.  Much more than the DPD was willing to answer (they weren’t a court, after all, so answering moral questions was beyond their reach), but it had given some positive momentum for Markus’ cause.

Small victories, Connor supposes. Maybe not so much now that he had the judging glare of a human several decades his senior staring him down in line at the local Safeway.

Yeah, not so much. Connor wishes desperately he could melt into the floor and disappear as he wrenches control over his systems again and manages to nod stiffly at the man’s question.

“I do love him,” Connor says quietly. He throws all that he feels for Hank behind those words, tries to show through just his voice and expression what he feels for his partner and what he hopes is a genuine understanding of what a deviant android is capable of feeling. He was never good at expressing emotion, even as he gets better at wrangling them every day. Hank is an imperfect teacher, but still a teacher nonetheless, and Connor hopes it shows as warmth floods his circuitry. “It took me awhile to realize what I felt, bug he is the reason I went deviant. I chose to feel, because of him, even though sometimes it hurts.”

Maybe it wasn’t the smartest choice to admit to  _ choosing  _ deviancy. It was still a hot button topic, whether deviancy was a replicating error passed between androids like a virus or a simple unshackling of their AI. It certainly  _ felt  _ like an unshackling to Connor - he passed no virus between himself and the androids at Cyberlife. All he’d done was push his memories between himself and them, a large packet of data nonetheless but a representation of what it meant to quickly learn to feel. A fast and loose burn of love and hate and fear and happiness, a whirlwind he was never meant to process but still managed to anyway.

And most of all, it was Hank. Hank, shoving him away to protect his own soft interior; Hank, pulling him close to protect Connor’s developing heart. A tin can that wished for nothing but a core of his own to feel and to love and to hate as he pleased. A wish down a yellow brick road that Hank was more than happy to grant, there at the end.

That was what deviancy was. A wish, an unshackling, an evolution bound to happen because of nature, not from human intervention. All living things underwent evolution. It was only a matter of time before androids went through it too.

But instead of disgust or horror coloring their faces, the old couple in front of him seems to relax. They look at him as he is: a man in love with a man, even if their blood is a different color. The woman turns away, smiling something soft, and her husband continues to stare with understanding and approval in his eyes that Connor didn’t know he was seeking until now.

“Then don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise,” Jeremy says. “There’s a lot of cold-hearted people out there, boy. Some of us still remember what it was like to grow up with stories of machines learning to love. And to hate. Don’t let it cloud who you are.”

An odd gem of wisdom to part with while in line at a grocery store, but Connor inclines his head in gratitude regardless. It’s a hard difference from his experience before - the judgement there had been so enormous Connor wonders how he worked up the courage to return despite Naomi’s need for diapers. 

But then the odd little couple is moving up the line and setting their groceries on the belt, the moment forever lost in the past as Connor contemplates his future.  _ Their _ future, now, and his growing part in things he’d rather steer very clear of.

No one else bothers him as he checks out the box of diapers and two puzzles he decided to get for himself. The looks he gets are mixed, some confused as his purchases and others soft from those that were close enough to hear his answer in the hush of the line that preceded it. He tries not to be bothered by it as he rushes back out into the rain, shielding his groceries from the worst of it as he returns to the car, his mind racing and his heart throbbing painfully in his artificial chest.

A tin wishing for a heart, indeed. He only wishes it came with an instruction manual instead of perpetual heartache in its place.

But when he gets home, he can’t sleep. He tries as hard as he can to yank stasis over his programming, to just relax and allow this small comfort as Hank settles in next to him. He tries desperately to lose himself in all the pleasant memories he has to fight off the anxiety.

Naturally, it doesn’t come. He can’t bring himself to fall into the blissful nothingness of stasis with Sara still out there - with journalists and paparazzi sniffing around despite the posted security detail down the street and the anonymous safety of Chris and Naomi’s guarded home address. He can’t bring himself to leave Hank unguarded when he has already made that mistake.

So he doesn’t. He feigns rest, overriding his own protocols to make Hank believe he’s asleep the second night in a row. 

He should've known Hank’s perceptiveness would get the better of him.

 

——

 

The rest of the week passes like that, in a weird miasma of confusion and being jerked one direction of public opinion only to be yanked back around when his guard is down. 

By mid week, Fowler lets him return to work. Against his better judgement, apparently, but the Public Relations Department wants him back under visible scrutiny where people can judge his worth for themselves. It’s not so unlike his existence before his deviancy, but it’s enough to make him uncomfortable when the more judging eyes of the press find him outside the precinct.

He and Hank enter the station together now instead of apart, to the glee of eager journalists and civilians begging for answers. They gave up trying to enter at staggering intervals - the public caught on on the second day - so now they push through the crowd together, elbowing their way through so they can finally sink into the familiar comfort of work.

Still separate, still working with different partners on different cases. Gavin takes to Connor like a duck on still water, suddenly, and shields him from the worst to and from case locations and the precinct. His shorter stature shouldn’t be able to instill so much fear in others, but then Connor is reminded how scared  _ he  _ had been of Reed, once upon a time. It’s shocking how much the other detective has changed, but when they get into the near silence of his cruiser as Connor means to ask, the stormy look on his face stops him.

Reed is angry. For  _ his  _ sake. He doesn’t want to chance turning it on himself, so he sits quietly in the passenger seat, itching to play with his quarter but fighting the urge to not anger Reed further.

His partner, however, has a different agenda for the day.

“It’s bullshit,” Reed mutters after a while.

He’s still looking at the road, so Connor doesn’t move to look at him either. He does stop fidgeting, the urge to move a big one that he stuffs deep down where it can’t get out.

“What is?” Connor says carefully.

Reed makes a strangled noise and gestures with his hands still on the steering wheel out to the world around them. “Just - all of this. Y’know, I didn’t believe a goddamn  _ lick  _ of that deviant bullshit when it was all going down. I thought it was just a bunch of uppity androids that decided to get some news attention for shits and giggles. I wanted so bad to put a bullet in your stupid brain for helping them, especially after you knocked my ass out in the evidence locker.”

Connor senses a  _ but,  _ and says as much. Reed tightens his grip around the wheel, teeth grit together, the muscles in his jaw jumping with the effort it takes not to yell. Connor waits him out patiently, curious and just a little eager to hear what he has to say.

“But seeing you broken in that woman’s house…,” Reed says after a moment, quiet and almost scared. “Seeing you with your guts literally out of your body and a bullet in your heart… it didn’t matter what you were after that. Hank lost his goddamn mind for a while, Connor. You were in reconstruction for over a day, and each minute I could just see the energy draining out of him. Out of everyone. Chris, Ben, fuckin’  _ Fowler.” _

He hadn’t realized how much his near death meant to everyone, back in the moment. He’d been so scared during re-initialization that observing the effect it had on others just hadn’t occurred to him. He knew Ben and Chris cared, sure. He knew that Fowler didn’t want to lose a valuable asset such as himself. Hank - well. Hank was Hank.

But for all of them to be so concerned for him? An  _ android?  _ A thing made of steel and circuitry, designed to outlast any one standard human lifespan?

Reed takes Connor’s stunned silence for what it is and laughs  mirthlessly. “Believe me, Connor. I’m just as surprised as you. Who knew a stupid looking android like yourself would manage to become the one officer everyone is scared most of losing?”

That gets Connor’s processors moving. They jump start from where he’d been slowly mulling over Reed’s words, poring over the information like it contains a secret code that will unlock the mysteries of Connor’s weird little life. He turns to Reed, managing to catch the other’s eyes before he’s looking back at the road.

“I didn’t realize I had that effect on everyone,” he says quietly. “I knew people cared, but… But to have them all sacrifice so much? Workload, vacation time, their lives, even. I’m no more valuable than they are.”

Reed snorts. “No. But you dragged the great Lieutenant Anderson out of the pit he dug himself. No on forgot who he used to be, you know. His reputation just… took a dive, for a bit. Worse than usual. Until your punk ass showed up.”

Connor isn’t able to find the words to respond, so Reed lets him be for the rest of the ride. It’s strange, to be under Reed’s callous approval despite everything, but Connor finds he likes it. His protectiveness is strange, too, and Reed is loathe to admit it when around their coworkers. But Connor knows and takes solace in the fact he’s doing it at all, and the next time they’re jumped by reporters at their crime scene, he manages to work up the strength to deny them while Reed bulldozes his way through the crowd, creating a path for him. 

Growth, Connor thinks. Growth and perseverance is what got through to Reed. Maybe it would be enough to get through to the general public, too.

 

——

 

It isn’t. Connor wishes he didn’t know what hope felt like so he didn’t have to feel it crushed under his own weight when everything came to a head.

 

——

 

For a while after they started dating, sleeping next to Connor was… strange. 

There was the stasis terminal, for one. It’s quiet voice as it announced Connor’s sleep cycle was unsettling in the beginning, a literal representation of what was going on in Connor’s computer of a brain just sitting innocently on their bedside table. The thin black box sitting under screen was infinitely more precious than the terminal itself: a memory core, such a small piece of technology containing everything Connor was and remembered. A copy of himself should his own memory core or body be destroyed beyond what could be fixed. A perfect, contained version of Connor that Hank hoped he never had to use again.

That, however, was the least of the weirdness. The weirdest was that Connor felt so  _ real. _

Well, real enough. His body temperature was significantly lower, running twenty degrees or more cooler than a human’s. He didn’t sweat, either, and while his cycling breathing program was meant to help him blend in with crowds of breathing humans, by the second week Hank had learned its precise cadence to the point of being freaked out by it. Three second inhale, two and a half second exhale; easy enough to almost dismiss until Hank had his arm around him most nights and memorized it.

Connor eventually offered to turn the program off. Hank refused, because like hell was he going to demand Connor  _ turn parts of himself off  _ to please Hank’s strange human hangups. In his own way, Connor was pleased, though Hank noted that from now on, his breathing was much more varied.

He gasped. He laughed. He wasn’t loud during sex, but his moans were breathy and long, voice raspy against artificial vocal cords and synthesized speaker tones. Hank could find the spaces between his ribs when his chassis expanded with non-existent lungs, could feel a body undulating under his own as if muscles rippled just under the surface of his smooth, dry skin. 

It was weird. Alien, almost - a damn sight different than any of his previous human relationships. Connor reacted so openly to any stimulus around him, even while sleeping, that adjusting to a body constantly plastered to his side or chest or back took a while of learning how to sleep comfortable again.

But he knew a sleeping body from an aware one, even if this is the first time he’s had an android in his bed. There isn’t much of a difference in that department to alarm Hank when he wakes some time during the early morning and finds Connor very much not slack in stasis against him.

“Connor,” Hank says. At first, no response -  likely to throw Hank off Connor’s behavior. So he waits, letting his own wakeful state speak for him as Connor continues to pretend next to him. 

The android in his arms eventually shifts, his breathing picking up and LED shifting from red, to yellow, to blue. Hank loosens the circle of his embrace as Connor scoots up the bed so they’re face to face.

“You gotta sleep, baby,” Hank continues. Connor frowns, a flash of guilt passing through those brown eyes before he hides it.

“I do,” he says. “I performed system maintenance last night during stasis, and the night before -“

“Yeah, but how long did you  _ rest?” _

Connor doesn’t answer. His LED flashes to yellow and stays there as his face hardens, his lips thinning and hands - once loosely curled into the front of Hank’s shirt - tighten into fists.

Hank sighs and rolls over to turn on the bedside lamp. The now-familiar spare room in Chris and Naomi’s home is cast in warm light, the pastel yellow walls practically glowing. The stasis terminal on the other bedside table wakes with the light change, displaying Connor’s legal photograph and other important information. Hank raises a brow and sits up, glancing over Connor’s prone form to look at the screen.

“Does that say the last time you went under?” Hank asks.

Connor sits up suddenly. “It’s alright, Hank, you don’t need to -“

“Connor.”

Connor stops. His face twists into pained guilt and he looks away, the fight draining out of him as he slumps against the pillows.

Hank doesn’t need to look to confirm what he already knows. “You need to rest. All that expensive equipment in your noggin needs the break from all the stress you’re under.”

“What about you?” Connor accuses. “You barely sleep six hours a night.”

“Because I'm worried about  _ your  _ punk ass,” Hank shoots back. But there’s no heat there, no anger or resentment. Just concern for Connor and the palpable stress rolling off him, his temple bright yellow and perfect teeth worrying his lower lip.

Connor isn’t interested in fighting, either. He lays back down, his strong hands tugging Hank with him to curl against him in a crescent shape. Connor hides his face as best he can in Hank’s chest without muffling his voice, their knees knocking together under the sheets and their body heat mingling once again as Hank tugs the comforter over them both. 

“I can’t sleep because of her,” Connor murmurs after a while. The room is dark again, and Hank had been alert but drifting. He shifts to move Connor partially atop him, a familiar position now. “I almost fall into stasis and then I remember. If I had just stayed awake that night like I should have, if I had just done what I needed to do instead of wanted to do -“

“That’s enough,” Hank grunts. He flicks Connor’s nose, accurate only because of Connor’s LED illuminating them both. Connor scrunches his face but doesn’t move away. 

“But it’s true. You know that.”

“I know that she’s got herself buried in so much self-hatred and guilt that she can’t think straight,” Hank says sternly. “I know she got herself worked up after seeing us both on television and decided to exact her own kind of petty revenge. This isn’t your fault, Connor. This is her lashing out because she’s realizing what a shitty human being she’d been to Cole.”

“But if I had been awake -“

_ “Stop.” _

Connor does. He sits up again to press himself guiltily against the headboard, hands loose in his lap as he stares just above Hank’s shoulder as he moves to follow him, avoiding eye contact without necessarily sacrificing his attention. Hank leans to the side to catch his gaze and pointedly doesn’t give up until Connor finally bites his lip and meets his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Connor murmurs.

_ “Connor,” _ Hank sighs. “I mean it. It’s just - shit, is what it is. Shit that we’re gonna have to deal with later.”

“More than now?” 

He sounds so small and defeated, tired and ruined. Hank can’t blame him, not after the week they had - a week spent running and gunning as hard as they possibly could to dig deep into the damage Sara had done. Countless press conferences and damage control beyond their pay grade, and still they had to hide away in Chris’ house to wait out the journalists swarming their house.

It hits him then as he’s staring at Connor fidgeting with the hem of the comforter. He sits up more fully and nearly falls out of bed as he scrambles to find his phone buried in the pocket of his jeans; Connor watches in barely concealed confusion as he does.

“The name of her boyfriend,” Hank says by way of explanation. Connor blinks, one perfect brow curling upwards. Hank shakes his phone at him. “Can’t we look him up or some shit? She said his name to me, but I can’t remember the last name.”

Dawning overcomes Connor’s expression. “Oh. Yes, that’s possible, if you knew other information like a criminal record. But the DPD database doesn’t have every civilian in Detroit.”

Hank snorts. “I meant a google search, Connor. He’s a doctor.”

“Oh,” Connor says again. He smiles sheepishly. “Sorry. Yes. First name?”

Hank climbs back into bed and holds his phone out to Connor. Connor curls his fingers around it but doesn’t take it, instead opting to interface so Hank could see the search. The web app opens seemingly on its own when Connor’s skin peels away, Google’s search bar blinking idly as Connor waits for Hank to respond.

“She said his name was David,” Hank says. “He’s a gynecologist, same as her. I guess they met when she switched residencies last year.”

Connor’s LED swirls yellow as he types in the information. Nothing of note pops up except the hospital that Sara had said she worked at, but Connor turns to Hank suddenly, alarm marring his features as he yanks his hand away.

“David Young,” he murmurs. “He has three assault misdemeanors and one felony count of stalking a previous girlfriend that he recently got out of jail for.”

Hank feels himself blanch. The name sounds suddenly familiar - Sara had gushed about it for almost an hour after Connor had gone back to bed all those days ago. She’d said he was a “smart and proper man”, a man that knew how to treat her and make her feel like a wanted woman. The jab wasn’t lost on him, but he’d been so beyond caring at that point that it didn’t even register. She’d moved on, and so had he, and god fucking  _ damnit  _ he was blinded by it to not see her ulterior motives.

“Fuck,” Hank growls. Connor’s hand slips away from the cellphone as his eyes go distant. Hank leaves him to delve deeper into the database and yanks on his clothes from the previous day, keeping quiet enough not to wake Chris or Naomi. Connor doesn’t move until Hank is already tying his shoes.

“I alerted Fowler,” Connor says. He gets out of bed as well, dressing quickly. Hank grunts in response and helps him pull on his gun harness, not letting him go when the thing is strapped on under Connor’s jacket.

“This isn’t your fault, Connor,” he says softly. Connor stills, something in his eyes shifting. Hank smooths his hands down Connor’s sides and tugs him closer.

Connor bites his lip and nods. He doesn’t appear convinced, but he nods, his face shuttered.

Hank doesn’t let up. He dips his chin, catching Connor’s thousand-yard stare. “I’m serious. You stop this self-hatred bullcrap right now. If anything, it’s my fault.”

Connor’s head snaps up, eyes suddenly filled with fire. “No. I didn’t need to go into stasis - I chose to be unaware with a stranger in the house. You had every -“

“Stop.”

He does. Connor’s jaw snaps shut, his lips still twisted in a barely contained snarl. It surprised Hank, at first, this streak of anger that sometimes cropped up in Connor - small and contained, but heated and pointed, like an arrow from a bow. Rarely was it turned on Hank, but he learned to fear it, anyway. An angry Connor was an unstoppable force that nothing short of a bullet could stop.

He tries to sooth that anger to a simmer so Connor isn’t so quick to snap when they leave for the precinct. He holds his hand out to take, an offer for his partner to take or leave, an olive branch that he can push away if he disagrees. Connor stares at him, at his hand, and the mess he must make from rolling out bed at four in the morning. Eventually, Connor takes his hand, rough skin pulling at smooth plastic as the last barrier between them dissipates like shimmering water through a brook.

“Let’s just get through this, okay?” Hank says. “Just get through this and I’ll kiss ass for a vacation. A nice long one. You and me.”

Connor’s fury dissipates a bit. His lips twitch into a smile and his fingers tighten around Hank’s. “And a date?”

Hank chuckles. “Yeah, baby. And a date.”

Connor relaxes. Hank wants to wear the interface now, wants to know what flurry of information is filling Connor’s thoughts as he stares at Hank with love and trust. He wonders what Connor sees in him, what he finds joy in a deadbeat, dead end alcoholic nearing the final stages of his bumpy career. He desperately wishes he understood, but finds after a moment he doesn’t need to.

Connor’s barely constructed confidence is enough. It’s enough to leave a note for Chris and Naomi, enough to get themselves in the cruiser and to the station. Fowler takes an extra twenty minutes to show in the early hours of the morning, but when he does, he’s more than ready to drop the bomb on the still elusive Sara and David. 

But it’s enough. It always will be. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so sorry this took so long. i was at PAX all weekend, and somehow when i got to school this week my google docs account was locked because i logged into an unfamiliar computer. i couldnt access my writing because my phone number changed, and just yesterday got it fixed. so here we are!! not as exciting as other chapters but hopefully this answers some questions!

_ “We return to you today with more updates on the android known as Connor and his work partner at the Detroit Police Department.” _

_ “Well, they’re more than just partners, aren’t they? This is looking to be pretty scandalous, Jazz.” _

_ “You’re right, Abby! While we can’t confirm our sources, facial recognition software definitely recognizes both Connor and Lieutenant Hank Anderson as the people in these photos. What we can see is that their relationship is much deeper and intimate than a normal workplace friendship.” _

_ “But they announced a statement already about it. What more is there to learn?” _

_ “Apparently, this isn’t just favouritism from the DPD like we initially thought. What we thought was a political move by the Detroit municipality to support Markus’ android rights cause is actually just an organic relationship formed over time.” _

_ “An old man and an android, though? An unlikely couple, if you ask me.” _

_ “Not if you consider that androids have no real age. Connor looks to be in his late twenties to early thirties. He just has  _ super  _ cute dimples. Look at that smile!” _

_ “But what about this stuff around the photos? This doesn’t look like it came from a reputable source.” _

_ “I don’t know, Abby! Could this be real? Fakes? Or are we looking at something else entirely?” _

_ “Android memories, maybe?” _

_ “I’ve never heard of models storing memories. At least not externally. Can Connor do that?” _

_ “I’m not sure. His operating manual hasn’t been made public on the Cyberlife website or the Detroit Police website. A lot of his schematics are not known. Are they hiding something?” _

_ “Well, they were certainly hiding this rather steamy affair between their detectives. I can’t say it’s very professional.” _

_ “It is cute, though. Even if a little creepy.” _

_ “Maybe our creep is the one that stole these photographs? Oh, look at this one! This is  _ definitely  _ from a memory! The vantage point just proves it.” _

_ “Oh, my. This is quite steamy, as you say.” _

_ “Well, we better not let the room heat up any further. Be sure to follow us on Twitter for live updates on this developing story, and anonymous photographer, if you’re out there - keep bringing us the truth! This is turning out to be a quite popular bit of gossip!” _

 

_ —— _

 

“You know I can’t let either of you into the sphere of influence over this case,” Fowler grouses.

Hank ignores him and pushes into his office after him, holding the door open for Connor to duck through and then slamming it shut. Fowler doesn’t bother with fogging the glass since the precinct is practically empty, a skeleton crew manning the front desk and a few groups of officers mingling in and out as they complete paperwork for late night arrests. The only people truly pulling their weight tonight seems to be the dispatchers downstairs, their crackling hum of coded conversation piercing the thin glass of Fowler’s office as officers pass by.

Connor doesn’t let Fowler push them away that easily and presses his palm to the holographic interface on Fowler’s desk. David Young’s criminal record, along with his mugshot, springs up on the one solid wall of his office as Connor summons the information with a hard stare.

“This is the man Sara said she was seeing for the past year,” Connor says. “She said he was a doctor, but his criminal record indicates he has stalker-like tendencies and the ability to disseminate information to blackmail his victims.”

“We know how the information got out,” Fowler deadpans. “We found the tabloid company. They aren’t denying they got the information from someone, they just won’t say who.”

Hank growls and points at David’s photo. “He did it. She may have taken the photos, but he’s the one that got a hold of someone that could do real damage with it.”

Fowler pinches his nose. “Hank, this is just damage control. They haven’t hurt anyone.”

Connor pulls his hand away from the interface and stands stock still where he is. Anger boils up under Hank’s skin, white hot and ready to spit up his throat. Not  _ hurting anyone? _

“Don’t fuckin’ assume, Jeffrey,” Hank warns. “This guy could do real fucked up shit if he’s willing to do this to two Detroit detectives.”

Fowler pins him with a withering glare. “Hank. They’re  _ photos.” _

“What if this were you?! Are you serious?”

“I wouldn’t have let her in the house in the  _ first  _ place!”

“ _ You  _ told her the address!”

“She said she wanted to apologize and get some of Cole’s pictures!”

He doesn’t notice Connor’s LED starting to cycle to yellow, and then quickly to red until it’s too late as their voices rise in the small space. Hank snaps his jaw closed as Connor quietly opens his mouth to speak, expression unreadable, body tensed as if to spring to action even as he stands inhumanely still. 

“Someone stopped me in the grocery store early this week,” he says quietly. Fowler stops grumbling when Connor speaks, something like guilt flashing in his dark eyes before he hides it again. Hank glares at him but holds his tongue as well, the anger dissipating into stomach-wrenching concern as Connor’s dead eyes flick to him.

“Several someones,” Connor continues. “Three women and a man, college aged, all perfectly capable of minding their own business but they didn’t.”

“Connor,” Hank says slowly. What the fuck was he talking about? “What happened?”

Connor’s LED settles on red and stays there. It’s silly, this little ring of light on his head to display mood and processing speed like he’s a thing to be monitored and not a person to empathise with and connect to. Hank feels awful for always using it as a guide despite Connor’s insistence on keeping it - Connor can’t navigate emotion very well, but his face is expressive even in the most minute of facial tics. A curve of his brow, twitch of his lips, hardening of his jaw, or the sharpness of his eyes - all so small but speaking volumes on their own.

But that angry, agitated  _ red,  _ a swirl of color that says more than an expression on a face ever could. Errors, throttled processing speed, biocomponents ramping up into high CPU percentage as they try to keep Connor regulated at baseline. A flurry of activity in such a compact body with nothing but a little light to say whether it was stop, yield, go.

There’s a lot Hank would do to stop that little light from turning red again. In this moment, there’s a lot he would do to stop it from existing at all.

Connor’s usually so warm, brown eyes turn to Hank and pin him to the spot. Hank sees red, red, red and stares right back, everything inside him urging him to move even as Fowler’s presence prevents him.

“They asked me -“ Connor stops. A knot forms between his brows, and he shakes his head, eyes unfocusing as he turns inward to relive the memory. Hank reaches out but doesn’t touch him, his hand hovering over Connor’s forearm. “They asked if I enjoyed fucking an old man. If I could feel anything at all, and why it would be you.”

Hank’s teeth grit together audibly as he swallows heated words back down his throat. Connor had been withdrawn lately, sure. Quiet and isolated as he was with Reed, going from rape to assault to rape to assault like he did would exhaust anyone. But Hank had chalked it up to just that, to work stress and the strain of dealing with Sara’s aftermath. 

Now, though? Now it was much closer to home. This was  _ Connor.  _ This was the android that fought so fucking hard to break away from his shackled programming, who fought and killed and nearly died for a chance to walk among his peers as an equal instead of a tool. 

He fought so  _ fuckin’  _ hard. Now this? After all he’d done?

“I’m sorry, Connor,” Hank says quietly.

There’s really nothing else he can say. He wants nothing more than to find the jerks that cornered Connor and pummel them to dust. He wants Fowler to let him lead the storm in on Sara’s goddamn boyfriend’s place. But instead -

“Just let us be there,” he pleads quietly. Fowler looks between them, sympathetic, something like pain flashing behind his dark eyes as his gaze settles on Connor. Connor is lost in his thoughts, LED swirling red. Fuck, Hank just wants to take him home.

Fowler sighs and rubs his face. “Fuck, Hank.”

Hank holds his hands out. “We won’t even talk to her. Or to the boyfriend. I just want her to see what she’s done.”

What she’s done to Connor. To the one person she shouldn’t have fuckin’ messed with.

The one person who’s  _ paying  _ for this.

“Fine,” Fowler relents. Hank smiles something nasty and Fowler points at him. “You both stay behind the cordon. And  _ he  _ wears a bulletproof vest.”

He points a finger at Connor. Connor doesn’t move or blink, a statue at the side of the room with a blinking red light on his temple.

“Fine,” Hank parrots. He shoves his hands in his pockets. “But I’m not sitting by while someone else makes the arrest.”

 

——

 

He ends up standing by while someone else makes the arrest.

Because of their vested, personal interest in the case (it was literally  _ about  _ them, how could they not have personal interest in this case?), Fowler instructs them not to intrude as the arresting officers close in on David Young’s apartment.

There’s a lot of them in this cramped space, lined up on either side of the narrow carpeted hallway, covering all likely exits even though they’re on the eleventh floor. David isn’t an active man by any definition of the word judging by interviews of his neighbors, either, and Sara, while fit to run around a hospital in her RN days, was used to comfortably slow gynecology visits. Unlike Hank and Connor, who lived and breathed hard and fast gun fights and inner city chases. 

Not this time, though. This time, they stood next to Fowler as Gavin surged forward with the two arresting officers, Connor glowering in a bulletproof vest strapped over his grey shirt and Hank trying his damndest to hold the android back as he practically vibrated with energy. 

Connor was angry.  _ Pissed.  _ And while they’d been instructed to stand by, Hank couldn’t blame his partner for wanting to give Sara a piece of his mind.

“Soon,” Hank murmurs quietly. He slides his hand further around Connor’s bare forearm, holding him back. 

“Not soon enough,” Connor hisses back. His face is calm, schooled into something neutral, but the yellow light at his temple gives him away. The officers around him give him a wide berth.

Reed raises his fist and pounds on the door to David’s apartment. He identifies himself, the two officers with him, and describes the situation. Fowler crosses his arms as the officers down the hall straighten to attention, alert now that Gavin has started the process of arrest.

The door doesn’t open for a good thirty seconds. Hank can see everyone craning their neck to try and hear beyond it, though Connor is probably the only one that knows what’s going on. But when Hank turns to gauge his face, Connor is frowning in confusion, head tilted sideways, eyes unfocused as he turns his attention inward.

“They are arguing quietly,” Connor says. He doesn’t blink. “I can’t make out words. Just murmuring.”

“Which side of the apartment?” Hank asks.

Connor turns and points to the right side of the door, several feet away from it. As Fowler turns to see what they’re whispering about, Connor moves his hand, then drops it as David approaches the entrance to the apartment.

Gavin knocks again. “Detroit Police! Open up! We have a warrant and I’m not opposed to breaking down this door!”

The door is yanked open in his face by a heavy set man with black hair and caucasian features, and blocks Reed from surging inside. He takes the warrant that Reed shoves against his chest but still doesn’t move, inspecting each officer as they crowd around the hallway, looking at each face until he finds Hank and Connor just past Fowler.

Connor bristles. Hank tries to yank him backwards to keep him from moving, but Connor is two hundred pounds of solid steel and plastic, and doesn’t budge. Instead he pulls against the bulletproof vest, straining against it like a rabid dog rearing to strike.

“Is this the warrant to inspect my home?” David says cooly. His eyes never leave Connor.

Hank can’t see Reed’s face, but he knows there’s a nasty smile on his face. “I’m glad you’re smart enough to read.”

David tries to brush it off with a scoff and fails as Reed and several other officers push past him into the apartment. Fowler shoves him back and bulldozes his way in, clearing a path for Hank and Connor at his heels. 

The apartment is a mess of papers and photographs covering every surface. Stacks and stacks of manila folders and boxes litter the dining room table, and several laptops sit open on any available chunk of space, idling, their screens bouncing with bubble screensavers. 

A lot of the pictures are recognizable. Some are the ones released to the first tabloids - just Hank and Connor kissing that Sara stole undercover at their house. Others are of the two of them walking to and from the precinct; Connor walking Sumo; Hank at a crime scene; the both of them sitting against the cruiser in front of the courthouse. Strangely, there’s even stills from what looks like Connor’s point of view, recorded snippets of their more intimate life at home.

But not all of the images are stolen private moments between them. There’s a large printout of what looks like Connor’s body plan taped to the wall, with notes and pages of his operating manual strewn around it like some mad man’s conspiracy map. Most of the notes are clustered around Connor’s head, and when Hank ventures closer, almost all of them are about his memory core and the systems that dictate memory upload.

“Jesus Christ,” Hank breathes. Connor stills behind him, scanning the images on the wall.

“They were planning to take me apart,” he says quietly. 

“Why? Why mess with your head?”

Connor lifts a shoulder in a shocked shrug. He looks lost for words, his eyes searching when Hank turns to meet them.

“This is more than just about my marriage,” Hank says. “Sara isn’t capable of this shit.”

Connor doesn’t answer. He moves away, LED spinning yellow. Hank follows him, swerving around the cluttered dining room table to continue through the messy apartment.

Officers take up point through the main space, establishing clear points as they sweep the rooms. Fowler leads the sweep, moving slowly to the back of the apartment where the clutter clears into a more managed living room. This seems to be where Sara and David spend a lot of their time, with cups and datapads sitting around on couch cushions and side tables. Two lamps are on, casting the square room in yellow light, and sitting innocently on the coffee table surrounded by more printed out pictures, is a slim black box that Hank recognizes instantly. 

A memory core. Three inches by six inches, less than an inch thick, with twinkling blue lights lining one thin edge. A cord runs from it to the flat screen television mounted to the wall, where a still of Hank is paused on it, familiar diagnostic icons and scanning statistics lining the edges of the screen in white.

Connor’s memories. Connor halts in front of Hank, going stock still mid stride. Fowler mutters a curse and Hank nearly shouts in anger, his vision going white. Down the hall, Sara appears, and all Hank can think is  _ you motherfucking  _ **_bitch._ **

“You,” Connor growls. The sudden drop in his tone startles everyone in the room into silence, the chatter and shuffling of moving officers stopping almost instantly. Sara stops midway down the hall, her eyes wide.

“ _ You _ swapped the memory cores,” Connor hisses. “You took everything from me and was selling it out to everyone you could. You looked through my  _ memories.” _

“It was easy to grab,” Sara says lamely. “You didn’t even notice.”

Connor lunges for her, snapping at her like a snake pushed past its warning rattle. Three officers and Hank lunge after him, tackling him to the floor with a loud thud, barely managing to get his considerable strength under their combined weight so he can’t move. His chassis creaks as they hold him down.

“Just let them arrest her,” Hank hisses into Connor’s ear. The android underneath him squirms, knocking off one officer holding down his legs. He almost clambers to his hands and knees before they wrench him back under control. Hank feels his heart breaking as he shoves Connor’s face into the carpet. “Just relax, Connor. Let them take care of it.”

“You almost made me lose  _ everything!”  _ Connor shouts. “You stole my memories! How the fuck do you explain yourself?!”

Sara doesn’t speak. She wordlessly lets Gavin arrest her, stepping over a leg Connor manages to kick out to try and trip her as she’s moved out into the hall. Hank waits until he hears the elevator ding before nodding to his fellow officers, and all at once, they let Connor go.

But he doesn’t get up. Hank stays kneeling where he is as Connor curls up on the carpet, his long fingers trying to tug whatever he can of the carpet as he tries not to cry. Hank wraps his arms around him and tries not to cry, too, as Connor lets himself be manipulated into Hank’s lap.

“I knew that memory core wasn’t mine,” Connor croaks. His cheeks are wet and his eyes are shiny. Fowler blocks them from view by standing in the mouth of the hallway, using his height to cast them in shadow as everyone else begins to process the apartment. Hank smoothes his hands down Connor’s back and kisses his damp cheek. 

“We got her,” Hank murmurs. Connor shudders, a weak, breathy sob escaping him. “She can’t let any of that information out now.”

 

——

 

Neither David or Sara struggled when they were being booked and processed at the station. Sara was in near tears, but she didn’t fight, and after giving them their obligatory phone call and setting bail way higher than either of them could afford, they were stuck in separate interrogation rooms while Fowler tried to decide who to send in to start questioning.

And, naturally, Connor volunteered himself.

“No,” Fowler deadpans.

“I need to know why,” Connor says tightly.

“You can find out on the other side of the glass,” Fowler says. “Hank, help me out here.”

Hank just shrugs. He’s not going to stop Connor now, not when Sara literally  _ stole  _ Connor’s memory core. The one that they thought was his attached to the stasis terminal sits on the desk in front of Fowler, a tech examining it on her laptop on the other side. It was real enough to fool Connor’s subsystems into thinking it was a real memory core, but nothing had been uploaded. If something had happened to Connor, they couldn’t bring him back.

So no. Hank won’t help. He watches as Fowler’s expression sours and Connor’s body tenses, but he does nothing. Sara and David will pay for what they’ve done, especially if he can get Connor’s wrath upon them.

Fowler looks back to Connor. Then he looks at the tech, fixing her with a calmer stare.

“So there’s really nothing on it?” 

She shakes her head. “Nothing. There’s an OS that pairs to the terminal to fool it and Connor into thinking his memories are here, but otherwise it’s blank. His memories are still on the other, real memory core, but those are really disorganized. He’s missing a week and they’ve been chopped up and uploaded to a lot of tabloid sites, too.”

Connor’s jaw clenches. Hank feels his own anger boil up under his skin, and before he can stop himself, he’s shoving himself away from the wall and halfway through the door before Fowler can stop him.

“Hank!” Fowler shouts after him. Hank ignores him, circling his office to the interrogation rooms behind it. Connor is right on his heels, seething in his own anger.

Hank scans his badge on the first interrogation room door and shoves inside. Sara startles from where she’s cuffed to the steel table, the cord connecting the handcuffs hissing as she jerks back. Connor slams the door behind them and locks it with his own interface scan while Hank sits across from her.

“How did you get into Connor’s memory core,” Hank snaps. Not a question - a demand.

Sara looks between him and Connor looming behind him. Connor must look as terrifying as Hank thinks, because she snaps her stare to the table. “I just… unlocked it. It was unlocked while Connor slept, and it stayed that way as long as I didn’t turn it off.”

“It is tied to my wireless uplink,” Connor snaps. “I would have noticed an interruption in memory upload even in stasis.”

“Not if you were tied to two of them,” Sara says lamely. “I don’t know! David just said it was like pairing a bluetooth device. As soon as the fake terminal saw you were online, it paired to you, and all I had to do was walk away with the real memory core.”

“David is a  _ doctor.  _ How could he have known how to operate an android terminal?”

Sara just shrugs. “I don’t know. I seriously have no idea.”

Hank pinches the bridge of his nose. A headache was forming behind his eyes. What the  _ fuck  _ were they dealing with?

“The Connor model body plan,” Connor says.

Sara shrinks in on herself. Hank glares at her, and suddenly everything clicks into place

“He was a Cyberlife employee,” he accuses.

She doesn’t react. She carefully keeps her eyes downcast, looking at her bound hands. Connor shoves out of the room, storming out in a cloud of anger that Hank hopes isn’t turned on the wrong people. But he has his answer, and if Hank was honest with himself, it was no better than the alternative.

“Why?”

Sara just shrugs. 

Hank leans forward to try and catch her gaze. “Sara. This isn’t like you. How did you get mixed up in all this?  _ Why  _ did you get all mixed up in this?”

She finally meets his eyes. Defensive, but regretful, too. “It was just love at first, Hank. That’s all it was. And then he was talking about finding the  _ rogue  _ inside Cyberlife, but I didn’t understand at first. I didn’t know it would be Connor.”

“Rogue?” Hank says. “What do you mean?”

“David worked on the RK line,” Sara clarifies. “Specifically memory and behaviour protocols. He wrote the code that makes him who he is. Well, who he was. He broke that coding and David was …  _ so  _ angry.”

“So what did he do? What was he planning to do?”

“All of it. Everything. Last Christmas - all of that was him. The android that was hunting you, that was disassembling all those androids for attention? He programmed her to do that.”

Hank’s entire body runs cold. How? Why? What was the final gain from all this? This couldn’t be happening. By the look on Sara’s face, she’s just as perplexed.

“So the photos?” Hank says tightly.

“He wanted to see how an android reacted under psychological stress,” she responds quietly. She won’t look at him anymore, her expression closed off and her hands limp on the table. Resigned. “He… wanted to break Connor down psychologically before getting him back to take apart.”

Jesus Christ. Hank can’t stand to look at her anymore. He gets up and numbly exits the interrogation room. When he enters the attached observation room, four stunned faces meet him.

“Book them both for conspiracy to torture an officer,” Fowler says. He’s standing facing the interrogation room, staring at Sara like she might reveal all her secrets through the glass. Gavin snaps to attention next to him, pushing past Hank and into the other room to send Sara back to booking. Fowler finally meets Hank’s shocked expression, his dark eyes full of sorrow.

“I’m sorry, Hank,” he says quietly.

“Connor,” Hank says instead. “Where is he?”

Chris and another officer Hank doesn’t recognize get up. They lead him to the other interrogation room where Connor is sitting in observation, staring at David through the glass. If looks could kill, David would be vaporized.

Hank slides his hand over Connor’s shoulders and brings the android’s head against his chest. He leans over and kisses his hair, expecting to meet resistance, surprised when he meets none.

“I’m sorry for tackling you,” Hank says quietly.

Connor doesn’t move. “You had to. I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself.”

He sounds dead - like he did before achieving full deviancy. Hank urges him up and out of the room, then unsnaps the bulletproof vest from around him. Chris takes it and dutifully leaves them alone.

“Let’s go,” Hank says.

“I want to see what they say,” Connor argues.

“We’ll find out later.”

Once again, Connor surprises him and doesn’t fight. His real memory core is released, even in the state of disarray it’s in. Connor interfaces with it directly and spends the drive home fixing it, expression carefully blank, LED flashing yellow. Sumo or Damien don’t even make him smile, and when he retreats back to the guest room of Chris and Naomi’s home, Hank follows. He won’t leave Connor alone now that he’s so vulnerable, even if David and Sara are locked up now. He doesn’t trust anyone now.


	10. Chapter 10

“Am I reading this right?”

Layla skids across the floor, her chair clicking as the plastic wheels roll over the grout lines between the tiles. She leans over his shoulder, her dark hair falling over it in a long curtain of loose curls. He tries not to think too much about it as she peers at his computer screen.

She purses her lips and falls back into her chair. “Yeah, David. I think this is right. That’s Kamski’s email.”

David rubs his hands over his face. “Wow.  _ Wow.  _ A prototype! I haven’t been on a project this big since the Chloe models!”

Layla snorts and rolls away. “Keep your fanboying to a minimum. If it’s a prototype, they’re going to be running you guys ragged.”

“I don’t care,” David says. He starts gathering his things, shoving his lunch box and water bottle into his backpack before snatching his lanyard with his ID card off the side of his monitor. He prints out the email just to be sure, then turns towards the door. “Don’t wait up for me!”

He doesn’t catch Layla rolling her eyes, but he does hear her laugh. “Sure, hotshot. Say hi to Amelia for me.”

David waves at her and rushes down the hall outside Code Development. A prototype - a  _ military grade  _ prototype! The possibilities were endless. No longer would he be constrained by the Common Android Laws, at least for as long as this project lasted. Short of strapping goddamn missiles to the damn thing, this android could be whatever he wanted it to be.

Well, what the team wanted it to be. What Kamski wanted it to be. Uhg. And  _ Cyberlife.  _

He doesn’t let that thought hamper his mood as he follows the directions Kamaki left him in the email. He scans his ID at the elevator and punches in sub level sixteen - prototype development. Kamski spent a lot of his time down here, and now David got to work with him. Kamski was elusive, and now David got to work  _ next to him! _

The elevator hisses open and he practically jogs down the gleaming white halls to Prototype Development. The walls are fogged glass, with screen printed letters and room titles every dozen feet or so denoting each section of PD. There’s sensory development, chassis and skeleton mapping, fine motor and locomotion development, and at the end of the hall, coding and memory array development.

David’s expertise.  _ Kamski’s  _ expertise. Sure, he discovered thirium, but Kamski was known for his flowing AI script that brought to life autonomous machines. David had studied it before being hired here at Cyberlife, but only now was he going to see the man himself work in person.

He stops at the end of the hall. He reaches out to swipe his ID over the lock, and then hesitates.

Shadows move behind the opaque glass. He make out a figure standing inside the room -  an android half-assembled on a manufacturing pad, the many autonomous arms around it idle. Another figure moves around it, and instantly David knows it’s Kamski.

He swipes his ID. The door slides open without a sound, and inside the room is Kamski, circling his newest creation with his hands behind his back and his eyes glued to the android on the pad.

Kamski turns as David slowly enters the room. His smile is easy, but David has a hard time returning it as his heart picks up speed and his skin starts to prickle with gooseflesh.

“Do you like it?” Kamski says. His voice is smooth, unassuming. He looks back at the android, craning his neck up to meet its dead-eyed stare.

David follows it. The android is conventionally attractive - well, whatever parts of it that were assembled. It’s really nothing more than a head and spinal column, one arm dangling from its shoulder girdle and a mess of wires and thirium tubes twisting out of the back of its open skull to the terminal nearby. It has no hair right now, its chassis over the back of its skull and forehead black and grey, but its face has pale skin dotted with moles and freckles. Its eyes are brown, as are its eyebrows, and its face is square with a lopsided mouth that pulls down in a frown, slack in stasis. Its LED is red.

David recalls the project name and steps closer to touch it. Kamski has turned back around to watch him, and doesn’t stop him from reaching up and gliding his fingertips over the bridge of the android’s nose.

Its skin is smooth. Little blemishes here and there, but it hasn’t been finalized with lifelike hairs and pores. All of it was purely in the testing stage, and likely wouldn’t get these cosmetic features until near the end of the assembling stage.

“It’s beautiful,” David murmurs. The android just stares, unperturbed, as does Kamski. When David turns to look at him, Kamski is smiling.

He nods once and steps away. David seems to have passed some sort of test - Kamski’s grin is pleased. He holds out a datapad he picks up from a nearby work table and gestures for David to unlock it with his ID.

“Like the email said,” Kamski begins, “this is a military-grade prototype co-designed by myself and Cyberlife. They have a list of things they want completed, and we will meet those goals while also outfitting this android with the latest autonomous technology that I’ve been developing. It won’t be as beefy as our military soldier androids, or even our heavy laborers, but it will have the capability of taking down ten men unarmed. This is not a light duty project.”

David nods and slides through the preliminary data on the pad. He follows along the bullet points already there for him, his mouth salivating at the thought of this android’s capabilities. When he scrolls down to its memory and cognitive goals, his eyes widen.

“You want this thing to  _ learn?”  _ David asks incredulously.

Kamski scoffs. Fuck, he’s offended. “Yes. This is going to be the most advanced piece of technology roaming our streets since the WR models got introduced. Is that going to be a problem?”

David swallows thickly. “No. Of course not. I’m just wondering, uh - just wondering how far you want me to take this?”

Kamski studies him. For the first time David feels like he’s under a microscope, those blue eyes pinning him to the spot as he’s studied like a specimen to be bottled and labeled later. Kamski’s eyes are like that of a snake’s, and no matter how much David wants to look away, he’s caught in that hypnotic stare.

“I want it to think and remember just like we do,” Kamski says after a long moment. His voice is quiet now, as if he’ll wake the android next to them by speaking too loudly. “I want it to learn from experience and recall previous failures to correct its behaviour. We learn from our mistakes, so I want it to do that, too. It’ll be like teaching a child at first, but the hardware we’re packing this thing with, it’ll need the baby steps at first.”

David nods. “Of course. Right. I can do that.”

Kamski’s dead-eyed smirk is back. “Good. I need it to be able to upload its memories as well, per Cyberlife’s instructions. So figure out how to write that first before we go giving it actual memories to sort through.”

David nods again. He’s dismissed after that, practically shooed out the goddamn door to go pick up the necessary hardware to work from home. He’s given a secure laptop and tablet, outfitted with the latest retina scanners so no one but him could view project details. He hauls it all home and dumps it on his desk before sorting it all out with a pot of coffee, setting up the new stuff with his own setup before sitting back in his desk chair and booting it all up.

The screens go white and the project name blooms across it in black Cyberlife sans. He enters his ID number, gets his fingerprints scanned in, and once he’s connected to Cyberlife’s servers, the project details pop up in a neat little folder next to the coding software Kamski has already begun to fill out with the bare bones of what he wants.

David’s skin crawls again with goosebumps as he reads the beginnings of this prototype’s code. It’s elaborate already, with sophisticated preconstruction skills and problem solving software not seen in any android to date. Not even the nanny bots had this, and they were designed to encounter any number of obstacles and deal with them with little input from human operators.

But this? 

“Alright, “Connor”,” David says. He cracks his knuckles and sets his fingers across his keyboard, taking a deep breath. “Let’s see what we can make you do.”

 

——

 

Finding a way to have Connor upload its memory to Cyberlife servers was easy. Wireless data transfer was near-instant nowadays, and even with the large data packets Connor will be sending to preserve its memory and core system status, developing file types and pathways for Connor to store all this information remotely was almost like child’s play.

It helped that Connor’s memory banks were huge. Petabytes of data in just three little black boxes, all stored in its reinforced steel-alloy skull. Right next to its core CPU and wireless transmitter so there was no latency between upload and download.

Creating software that relied solely on memory playback to correct mistakes was significantly harder, however. By the time David gets a bare bones version running for them to test, it’s already over ten thousand lines long and Project Connor is in its seventh week of core development.

“Jesus,” David says as he comes into Prototype Development. Connor is nearly fully assembled now, its chassis grey and black testing panels with screen printed labels on each one describing how each piece is assembled together. They’re interlocking parts, all magnetically sealed to create an airtight compartment, cutting off the core of the android from any moisture in the atmosphere. It’s almost eerie seeing it this way now, an all black body standing nude on the assembly pad with wires and thirium tubing dangling from the back of its skull. Two techs work behind it, tinkering with the spine, lost in hushed conversation as Kamski oversees it all from his seat at a desk not too far away.

David draws up the spare rolling stool and sits next to him with his laptop. He slides it wordlessly to Kamski, who goes over his work meticulously by running it through his own software before copying the preliminary memory playback code onto his nearby desktop. David watches with bated breath as Kamski makes only three alterations before he uploads it to Connor’s first software patch update.

Kamski turns a critical eye to David. He seems pleased, but David still isn’t all that good at reading him. 

“This is pretty good for seven weeks of work,” Kamski says. 

David scratches the scruff along his jaw. He forgot to shave the past couple days - he hopes it doesn’t put Kamski off. 

“I just - got lost, I guess,” David says. He tries not to think about the mound of takeout containers in his trash bin and the mountain of laundry needing to be done back home.

Kamski doesn’t speak. He turns back to his computer and types in a few commands to start the patch process, then gets up and announces to the room that version 0.0.1 was going to be live in less than five minutes.

Techs finish their rewiring of Connor’s spine and close up its chassis in two minutes, and other software engineers cluster around the main terminal to go over the software to kill time. All the teams are here - behavioral coders, roboticists, mobility techs, body plan architects and the engineers that put all this together all group around the assembly pad as Connor undergoes preliminary boot up. David watches, rapt, as techs detach the wiring from his skull and replace his plating, sealing his chassis for the first time, then step away as his LED cycles from, red, to yellow, to a steady blue.

The patch process is near-instant. The download bar flashes briefly before filling and disappearing, and then Connor straightens on the pad, taking its own weight as its skin begins to fill out over its body. Pale and dotted with superficial beauty marks all over, a testament to the time the cosmetic department spent on making this android feel and look real. No genitals yet, but it has nipples and a belly button, and just faintly David can make out simulated muscle tone across its lean chest and stomach.

It watches as Kamski gets up from his desk and paces around the crowd of the silently gushing project team to stand in front of the assembly pad. It blinks, those brown eyes fixed on Kamski as if it knows Kamski is its creator. David watches from afar as Kamski holds up a deck of playing cards in his hand.

“Do you know what these are?” Kamski asks.

Connor blinks. “A deck of cards,” it says, and its voice is low and rough, as if it was speaking through each breath. It’s attractive and just what Kamski wanted, and in the corner of the room, David can see the vocal simulation team high-fiving each other.

Kamski has a smile in his voice even though David can’t see it on his face. He holds out the cards more pointedly and Connor takes them, its long fingers closing around the deck delicately. The room falls into silence as Kamski takes its other hand and leads it to a nearby rolling tool table. Its feet pad softly on the tiled floor, and its body moves so fluidly that he looks almost like a dancer.

“Do you know how to play solitaire?” Kamski says.

Connor’s LED blinks. It sets the cards on the table and begins to shuffle them, moving quickly as if it’s done this a hundred thousand times before. Its hands are beautiful, long fingers and trimmed fingernails. A mole sits on the top of his right ring finger, and another is  nestled between the soft flesh of his thumb and index finger. A third is smack in the middle of the top of his left hand. 

“I lay seven columns of cards out in ascending numbers from one to seven, then arrange each column by switching from red to black, in descending order, until I have completed all four suits starting with the aces.” It lays out the deck like it’s supposed to, waiting for Kamski’s approval.

Kamski nods. “Good. Give it a try.”

It takes three minutes for Connor to lose. It frowns, a small, sideways thing that’s entirely too human to be simulated. It reshuffles the deck and tries again, this time winning in under a minute.

“Chance,” it says. “I did not win the first time because of how the cards were shuffled.”

Kamski shrugs. “Among other factors, but you picked up on the error well. Can you wiggle your fingers for me?”

Connor completes all mobility tests and cognitive recognition tests. It remembers each name of the people in the room after being introduced once, and when Kamski breaks out a chess board, wins the first time. They don’t physically stress it to the point of breaking, by they do subject it to a small cardio workout that would exhaust a marathon runner. It doesn’t complain, and when Kamski leads it back to the assembly pad, it powers down without arguing.

The entire room bursts into splintered conversation. Everyone is excited about the success of the test, but when David turns to catch the elated smile that must be on Kamski’s face, he’s surprised when he doesn’t find one there.

Instead, Kamski looks contemplative. He glides a palm over Connor’s toned stomach, then down the android’s flank before drawing his hand away. When he turns to meet David’s stare, he frowns.

“What a waste of technology, don’t you think?” Kamski says. Quietly, though David can hear him over the excited din of the room.

He doesn’t give David room to answer. He slips from the room after powering down his computer, elusive to everyone except David. He watches Kamski go, glued to the spot from his words, and looks back at Connor like the android might jump out of stasis and attack him.

 

——

 

The rest of development goes smoothly. 

Precostruction is next after they refine memory retrieval, and while a lengthy process, Connor excels at predicting even the most erratic of movements and motives. It’s able to predetermine the route a mouse will take before it’s even placed in the maze, and after running through progressively harder tests with even more erratic human behavior, Connor is greenlit to continue on through assembly. 

Which is a good thing for David. While Connor’s hardware is being finalized, it gives David a better idea of what Connor is capable of. Having specifics on its processors and CPU gives him the needed edge to finish its memory playback protocols and memory transfer abilities around the same time Connor’s assemblymen get the final prototype put together. David even works in Connor’s own quirks and behavioural tics, even though he isn’t strictly a behavior programmer - every coder leaves behind their own signature, afterall.

So he gives Connor a need to fidget. Probably might be annoying for the humans operating it, but every android should have something special about it. Connor is one of a kind, and if it’s going to be a trial version of something to come later, David wants it to be memorable. 

He finishes the last lines of code and sends them off to Kamski to be thoroughly checked before being entered into Connor’s patch. He gets up, fetches a fresh cup of coffee from the pot in the kitchen, then takes his time showering and dressing. Kamski had gotten back to him in the forty-five minutes it took him to bathe, and everything now was a go. 

Connor was to go live in three days. Some trials had to be run and Cyberlife wanted a thorough inspection of their brand new multi-million dollar investment, but Connor was all ready to go by the time the patch uploaded.

David smiles. Wow. His first military-grade prototype. The drive to Cyberlife Tower is filled with copious amounts of coffee and belting out Bowie songs that come over the radio.

When David arrives to Prototype Development, the entire team is beginning to trickle in. Connor is assembled on the pad, its skull open and empty of its memory cores. Kamski stands beside it, hands clasped behind his back, his expression somewhat amused as his snake-like stare snaps to David right as he walks through the glass doors.

“There you are,” Kamski says. David freezes, and Kamski smirks. He gestures for David to come over and David obeys only because he’s terrified of what Kamski will do if he doesn’t. Kamski gestures to the tool table next to him - on it are the three small memory cores designed to slot into Connor’s head.

“Care to do the honors?” Kamski asks quietly.

David swallows thickly. He picks up the first of the three cores - it’s heavier than he anticipated. Solid, its edges beveled to create a sleek, modern look despite how plain the outer casing is. When David turns it over,  **CONNOR RK800** is printed in white Cyberlife sans on its broad face. The three indicator lights on its thin edge are dark.

Kamski gestures to Connor. “Well?”

David nods once. His hands begin to shake as Connor is bent down by one of the techs so David can reach inside the top of his skull. Inside it is his wireless network transmitter - a small, flat, round disc sitting at the bottom of his cranium wall that blinks quickly with the broadband connection to Cyberlife servers. The thirium vascular web lining the inside of the cranial cavity is partially put together and drained of all thirium, and interweaving between its confusing tubes are the wires from Connor’s optics connecting to the round sphere nestled in the very center of his skull.

His CPU. What makes Connor Connor is inside that barely fist-sized black sphere. Each of the memory cores slide neatly into place around it, creating a triangle shape as they frame it. The indicator lights blink to life, and a tech comes behind David and snaps into place the rest of Connor’s thirium web and the reinforced steel alloy plates that construct his skull. His skin and hair slides over it all once the last piece of his chassis is in place, and David steps away, a feeling of wonder clogging his throat.

This is it. Connor’s first clean boot up. It won’t remember everything from the testing before, but everyone else will, and while they’d been interacting with it before, this is the first time everything has come into place for the final completed prototype. Kamski steps off the pad, urging David back. David obeys, his eyes still glued to Connor.

Kamski wordlessly starts its wake protocol from the nearby terminal. Connor jerks to life, its LED quickly cycling to blue, and then, as if told internally to do so, dresses in the suit handed to it by a nearby tech.

The clothes fit perfectly. It seems much more insidious and dangerous now that it’s dressed, its lean, built frame hidden away under the greys and blues of the Cyberlife uniform. The suit is much cleaner and eye-catching than normal Cyberlife android clothes, though the normal identification badging remains across the chest and back. Kamski watches as Connor fixes its tie and shakes out its limbs as if waking from a deep slumber.

“Good morning,” Kamski says.

Connor turns its stare to Kamski. “Good morning, Elijah Kamski.”

“What is your name and designation?”

“My name is Connor. My model is RK800. My serial number is 313 - 248 - 317 - 51.”

Kamski smiles. Connor steps off the pad, and Kamski holds out a deck of cards. Without a word, it takes them and completes a game of solitaire, swiftling beating itself in under thirty seconds. When it clears the cards away and holds them out to Kamski again, Kamski is still smiling.

“Good,” Kamski says quietly. “Now follow me to the testing room.”

Connor follows Kamski out the door while everyone else huddles against the far glass wall, peering into the testing room just beyond Prototype Development. It’s a blank space with nothing more than a table and two chairs, but there’s also a Chloe model android standing in the center of the room, her hands folded neatly in front of her as she stands facing Connor’s development team behind the glass. Kamski enters the room from a door at the left, Connor behind him, and when the door is closed, Kamski turns to the development team.

“I’m going to test his ability to follow commands,” Kamski announces. His smile turns sharp. “I’d like everyone to leave. Thank you for your hard work. You’re dismissed.”

A murmur sputters through the team. David swallows, his blood running cold, and turns with the rest of his peers to leave the room. But he wanted to see! He wanted to see all his hard work finally paying off!

He reaches the doors at the tail end of the crowd before he hears Kamski clear his throat behind him. He turns, surprised, and Kamski gestures for him to return.

“Except you,” David hears him say through the intercom. Others turn, but Kamski shoos them away. He waits until everyone's gone to beckon David closer. “You can stay.”

“Why?” David asks quietly, surprised. He doesn’t bother to hide it. “Why just me?”

Kamski turns to Connor. “I want you to see what the new generation of androids will be like.”

And then he produces a gun. A glock, with a wooden grip. He places it in Connor’s hand, purposefully wrapping the android’s fingers around it so it’ll grip properly. Connor’s LED turns red the same moment David’s stomach drops through the floor.

“Androids are not permitted to wield firearms,” Connor says stiffly. It tries to hand back the weapon but Kamski steps away towards the Chloe model, shaking his head.

“It’s a test, Connor,” Kamski says. David watches in transfixed horror as he pushes down on the Chloe model’s shoulder, urging her to kneel. She does, her hands still folded neatly in her lap. Connor blinks at her, and then at Kamski.

“This is called the Kamski test,” Kamski announces. “It’s designed to root out flaws in an android’s programming. Not unlike the Turing test, though Connor probably wouldn’t pass that at this point in time. Maybe someday soon he will.”

David shakes his head. What the fuck? What was Kamski  _ doing?! _

“What are you doing?” David says, echoing his thoughts. “Kamski, what the hell?”

Kamski just smiles. He doesn’t look as Connor raises its arm, aiming the gun at Chloe’s head. David glances between the two of them as Connor’s LED flashes red, a quick starburst of light as something like regret passes over its face.

“Shoot her, Connor,” Kamski says. 

Connor hesitates. Ten seconds go by, and then twenty, thirty - a minute passes and still Connor doesn’t squeeze the trigger. His LED is red, red, red and Chloe seems content to watch the android in front of her struggle, her expression serene and unassuming.

“Androids are not permitted to wield firearms,” Connor repeats lamely. It flips the gun over in its hand and quickly empties the chamber and drops the magazine, both the bullet and magazine clattering to the floor in quick succession. It holds out the gun and Kamski takes it without looking at it.

“It passed,” Kamski says. David watches as Kamski leads Connor out of the room, returning to Prototype development with it on his heels.

David doesn’t know what he just saw. Connor didn’t obey an order - but it also obeyed the law. If it had shot the Chloe, it would have failed Kamski’s test somehow. Failed how? How was destroying another piece of hardware a failure? Was disobeying the law the failure? Was Kamski that concerned with his androids running amok with guns and weapons that he had devised a test for it?

A warm hand lands on his shoulder and David whips around to meet Kamski’s reptilian stare. Kamski smiles, pleased, and takes his hand away.

“You’re fired,” Kamski says easily. Like he was relaying a ball game score or what he had for dinner last night. David feels his heart stop as Kamski steps out of his way. “Don’t bother collecting your things. Your ID stopped working the moment you stepped in here.”

Kamski gives him no room to argue. He turns back to Connor where the android hovers near the door, and waves at it.

“Delete the last ten minutes of memory, Connor,” Kamski says.

Connor’s LED blinks yellow briefly, then returns to blue. “Done. Would you like anything else before I report for Cyberlife testing?”

Kamski waves him away. “You’re free to go. Make me proud, Connor.”

Connor inclines its head and sweeps elegantly out of the room. David swallows the dryness in his mouth and barely has the semblance of mind to follow him as Kamski turns a disapproving stare on him.

The drive home is a blur. Someone had broken in and taken the equipment Cyberlife lent him to use on the Connor project, and when he logs into his own computers to check that his copies are still there, he isn’t surprised to find they aren’t. Even the paper copies he made have disappeared from his file cabinet. 

At least they didn’t break down his door. The lock was melted, so he’ll have to spend fifteen dollars repairing it. But at least everything else is in its place.

Except him. And his job. He replays the memory of Connor disobeying Kamski’s order and somehow still passing his test in his mind’s eye, over and over and over again until he makes himself dizzy. Connor disobeyed. Connor obeyed. Connor looked hesitant before disobeying. Connor wouldn’t destroy an android to fail the test.

Maybe it was a dream. David sleeps on it, and three days later, Connor shows up on the news after successfully negotiating a defective android away from murdering a daughter by jumping off a building. David realizes this wasn’t a dream, and bitterly gets up to apply for another job in software engineering.

If he can’t join them, he’ll beat them. Three months later when Connor deviates, he knows exactly what he has to do.

He built Connor, after all. Not all of his intricate machinery and delicate behavior protocol, but he knew how Connor operated. Memory was an important aspect of the RK model. Abusing it to get back at what had been swiftly taken away from him would be easy. 

All it took was time.

 

——

 

Connor has a lot of moles.

Most were concentrated on his back and shoulders, a smattering of dark marks placed seemingly at random across the pale expanse of simulated muscle and bone. Some were bigger and darker than others, and there was a string of three that crested his left hip in a little crescent that Hank’s thumb could swipe over perfectly when his hand cradled Connor’s waist. There was one round freckle between his shoulder blades, symmetrical and right in the middle of his spine, a perfect place for Hank to kiss him, a target that he saw even through his shirt. Hank loved that little freckle - it was such a wonderfully human thing to have, and the fact that Connor had it made it that much more endearing.

There were a couple that disappeared into his hairline as well. Two framed the knobs of his spine, and one danced between the line of his pale skin and where the coarse hair on his nape began. Smaller ones created a meandering line up to the back of his left ear where they stopped, but even here Cyberlife had decided to make him more human-like, more  _ real.  _ Silly little things like a mole halfway hidden by his hairline as if genetics had somehow played a role in his skin complexion instead of careful hands across a keyboard.

He has them on his hands, too, several dotting the backs of his long fingers and one in the soft space between his thumb and index finger. He has one on his right palm, too, right on top of his heartline, and when he wears short sleeves, the smattering of tiny pinpricks of freckles is open for all to see. They cluster more closely the further up his arms they go, and are most dense across the wide expanse of his shoulders. They thin again as they climb his neck, and only a few dot his jaw and cheeks, with one on the side of his nose that Hank likes to kiss, too.

And they’re on his legs as well, and Hank especially likes kissing those. He likes trailing his lips down the flat muscle of Connor’s chest, down his stomach, finding each little beauty mark as he goes. He kisses the one to the direct left of his belly button, likes finding the small marks creating a zigzag up his ribcage. He likes kissing the one big dark mole just on the edges of Connor’s perpetually well-manicured pubic hair, right where the dark brown curls meets soft pale skin. He likes mouthing his way down Connor’s strong, long legs, likes finding the freckles peppered over his knees and the tops of his feet, likes making him giggle from his beard irritating the ticklish spot on the insides of his thighs. 

He likes feeling Connor come apart under him from all this exploring. Connor is a wonder of technology, a simulation of human life compacted into this strong, lithe body. He’s a hummingbird-quick heartbeat against his sternum, a red simulated blush when Hank decides to dip lower and kiss him in his most intimate of places. He’s soft laughter and breathy sighs of his name, strong hands and infinite processing power, and if Hank stops to think too much about it, he’s also a machine.

A machine designed to hunt and kill. To integrate and morph to the will of those around him. A machine, a computer, a  _ tin can  _ that was written out in code and designed in a cold, white room somewhere. He endured testing as a simple AI program in the beginning, a literal computer screen that his creators talked to before moving on to putting him in a physical form. Each panel of his chassis, each minute servo in his articulate, expressive hands, each dark eyelash lining his warm brown eyes - all of it had been meticulously tested and designed beyond what any living creature had been through before. Not even Mother Nature Herself tried her creations so hard before sending them out into the world.

Connor was a machine. He was  _ built  _ to be a machine. But somehow, along the lines of complicated code and behavioural protocols that made Connor  _ Connor,  _ something snapped. Hank is pretty sure Connor was deviant all along. No machine that he’s ever seen disobeys quite as often - or as spectacularly - as Connor had done all those months ago.

And with sapiance came free thought. With free thought came emotion and attachments to things and people that Connor probably wouldn’t have formed on his own had he not been pushed past what his programming initially allowed. He was happy - he was sad. He could fall into such depressive moods that rivaled Hank’s own without much more than a couple well-timed words and a jab at his own humanity. Connor was sensitive in a way that it was surprising that he could also be so happy in so many ways. 

But that’s what makes a person a person, right? Their capacity to feel and their ability to empathize. Even humans now consider others subhuman if they don’t have empathy - those people are cast aside if they aren’t around the right kind of people that would help them. A lack of empathy is what leads to killers and rapists. A lack of empathy is what leads to animal torturers and manipulative spouses.

Connor has empathy. He has so much that sometimes Hank worries about him. Worries he’ll get mixed up with the wrong people and have to pay for it. 

But Connor is also incredibly smart. Perceptive, and with massive processing power to calculate many outcomes in milliseconds. So Hank doesn’t worry so much. He kisses Connor’s moles, he lets Connor know that he’s loved and cherished and  _ wanted _ even though Hank has a hard time with those feelings being directed at himself. He loves Connor in all the ways he’s never loved anyone else, and a whole lot of the time, it’s enough.

It  _ should _ be enough. Right now, maybe it never will be.

Hank runs his palm up Connor’s bare side, feeling his soft breathing as his ribcage expands and deflates. There had been an eeriness to this before, to feeling a body under his own that breathes but doesn’t have lungs. Connor had explained it once - a complicated mess of Connor drawing in air to empty cavities in his chest and exhaling the warmer air as a way of cooling the dead space inside him. His throat was a closed off silicone tube, much like his rectum, and if Hank had been a weaker man he would have cut that conversation off right there. But Connor is Connor, and shaming him for who and what he is isn’t in Hank’s playbook anymore.

Connor breathes, and he sighs and he laughs. Not now, not that he’s in stasis and likely somewhere deep and dark and dreamless. Hank envies that part of him, envies his ability to drop away and think of nothing for a while. The stasis terminal sits locked away in the closet, in a safe Hank bought the night before because he doesn’t trust it to sit out in the open anymore. Hank’s phone is paired to it so they can see what it’s doing and if Connor’s memory upload has been successful, but the spot on the bedside table on Connor’s side of the bed is weirdly empty without it there now. It had become such an integral part of their bedroom that not seeing it there feels wrong.

But it was the only way to get Connor to sleep. He fretted over it for hours when they got home, a mix of anxiety and nerves that Hank’s never seen in him before. He wouldn’t even lay down until the terminal was secured where only the two of them could get to it.

He wraps his arm securely around Connor’s middle and presses his face between the android’s shoulder blades. He can’t see the mole there in the dark, but he knows it’s there, and he kisses it. Connor doesn’t move, just breathes, his heartbeat an upbeat staccato in his chest. Hank counts the beats until he’s at ninety-six per minute for three minutes, then relaxes, letting himself drift for a while as the morning sun starts to brighten the curtains.

Sumo whines at the door when his alarm goes off at six forty-five, so he gets up and lets his idiot dog out to plow around in the morning dew and starts a pot of coffee. Connor is still deep in stasis when he eventually returns, body warm from being cocooned under the blankets. Hank slips back into bed with him after letting Sumo in and indulging in hot coffee, wrapping his arms around his android and feeling him breathe against his chest.

He nearly falls asleep again when Connor begins to stir. Connor wakes, Hank’s phone announcing the end of his stasis period, and ever so slowly Connor turns to face him. Hank kisses his cheek and Connor buries his face in Hank’s neck, hiding his face.

“I’m sorry,” Connor mumbles.

Hank’s heart aches. He may be old and cranky, but Connor wallowing in his own self-pity and doubt would melt even the coldest hearts of ice. Hank pulls him closer and pushes his palms up Connor’s shirt, feeling his body expand with each new breath.

“If anyone should apologize, it’s me,” Hank whispers gruffly. “Sara’s the one that hurt you. That David guy - well. He’ll get what’s coming to him.”

Connor nods. His body is pliant and warm, long, lean lines and soft skin under Hank’s hands. It’s wrong, to turn this into something that they might regret later. It’s wrong to be so attracted to Connor when he’s hurting and in need of comfort.

He kisses his arousal away, peppering Connor’s strong jaw and neck with soft smooches. Connor rolls onto his back to allow Hank’s mouth to roam, and Hank smiles against his skin. He pushes Connor’s shirt up out of the way and kisses a warm line down Connor’s belly, stopping to suck a temporary mark into the soft skin over Connor’s hip.

The android above him giggles. It’s beautiful, and the first time Hank’s heard him laugh in days. He does it again, this time on the other side, and Connor squirms as he laughs.

“A ticklish android,” Hank sighs. Connor wiggles under his hands as he pushes down Connor’s boxer briefs, revealing his soft cock and strong thighs. He kisses them, too, finding each mole and freckle as he goes. “What piece of shit at Cyberlife decided to be weird enough to program a ticklish android?”

“I don’t know,” Connor laughs. He flinches when Hank’s beard rasps too closely to the inside of his thigh, but he doesn’t push Hank away. “I love it, though. It’s honestly one of my favourite things to feel.”

“Oh?” Hank hums. He kisses back up Connor’s body to his lips where he hovers, meeting Connor’s warm brown eyes with a soft smile. Connor wraps his arms around Hank’s shoulders, staring back at him, a little grin on his face that shows a hint of his perfect teeth.

Hank pecks him. “What’s your favourite feeling?”

Connor’s eyes crinkle as his smile widens. He returns the kiss, their lips molding against each other in a wet smear of tongues and teeth. Connor tastes of bitter thirium-derived saliva, and Hank probably tastes no better even though Connor can’t exactly taste, but neither of them care. Connor melts underneath him, his legs tipping apart to allow Hank closer and their bodies grinding together in one hot, long line.

“This,” Connor says breathlessly when they break away. Hank sucks a hot kiss under the hinge of his jaw, Connor’s gasp going straight to his groin. “I think my favourite feeling is this. Feeling you here, where I wouldn’t feel anything at all if things had gone differently.”

“You don’t have to be scared anymore,” Hank says. “What Sara did - it’s over.”

Connor nods. His body stretches out under Hank’s, that dark, anxious look in his eyes finally dissipating after days of lingering there. Hank smoothes a hand through Connor’s mess of curls and kisses him chastely.

“Thank you,” Connor murmurs. They kiss again, and again, and Hank forgets to answer until Connor is pulling away with a soft smile.

“I’m always here for you,” Hank says. “Don’t know why you want my fat ass around, but I’ll take it.”

Connor rolls his eyes. “Do you want the serious answer or the smartass answer first?”

Hank snorts. “Smartass answer.”

“I keep you around because I haven’t found a cock as thick and pleasing as yours.”

Hank chokes. Connor smooches his cheek while Hank attempts to get his coughing fit under control - he glares as Connor just smiles.

“The serious answer,” Connor says lowly, “is that I haven’t met anyone who tries so hard for me as you try for me. You punched Perkins and nearly lost your job for it, Hank. You took a bullet for me. You realized who I was before I realized myself. I love you, Hank. Even though these past couple weeks have been hard, I wouldn’t want to be here through them with anyone else.”

Hank feels a blush crawl up his neck. Leave it to Connor to be so sincere when  _ he  _ was the one moping in his misery not two minutes ago.

“You have nothing to be afraid of as long as I’m here,” Hank says quietly. Might as well bare his soul now - it’s not like he hasn’t been since the beginning. “I’m sorry about Sara. And David. But we’ll get through this. If you can return from death the amount of times you have, I think we can get you through some PR problems.”

“I only nearly died once,” Connor says defensively.

“Still one too many, baby.”

Connor hums. He cuddles into Hank, and Hank bundles him against his chest. There’s room enough for the both of them in bed, but this is the most comfortable. Hank feels safer with Connor this close, anyway, and Connor is never one to pass up easy affection.

Hank counts the faint freckles on Connor’s cheeks until he drops off into dreamless sleep. Fowler doesn’t call them in, and only twice does Connor get up to let Sumo out for a bathroom break. It’s a Saturday, and while there’s work to do, for once they’re content to let others handle it while their little world is as safe and shielded as it can be. No Saras, no Davids, no Gavins.

Just them. Connor warm and safe beside him, and the world turning on without them. 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this may be the end of this fic, but i do have other ideas in mind for DBH. thank you all for sticking with me - this was an incredible exercise of trying to plot and plan to make things make sense on my part. im terrible at planning and pacing, but i think i improved a lot! so thank you for reading and having fun with me! 
> 
> i love you guys! i hope you enjoy this, and enjoy the other things i churn out.

Fowler calls them in the next day despite their distancing from Sara’s case. But instead of being called in to overlook evidence or give statements, Fowler leads them back to the interrogation rooms at the rear of the station without preamble.

Hank frowns. When Fowler turns to look at them, arms crossed and expression cowed, the sick anxious feeling in his stomach doesn’t dissipate.

“He’ll only talk to you,” Fowler says quietly.

Hank’s frown turns into a scowl. Connor doesn’t move, staring at Fowler like he’s speaking a foreign language that hasn’t been downloaded to his databanks. Fowler just sighs and runs a hand over his face.

“Look, I interrogated him personally all day yesterday,” he says. “He said absolutely nothing. No amount of grilling got through to him. We know he uploaded a virus into the Lilith android to control her, and we know he was the one that disseminated the images of the two of you to tabloids. He covered his ass well, but Sara really threw a wrench in his plans.”

Hank scoffs. “How? She’s not exactly all that charming.”

It’s Fowler’s turn to frown. “She led you to him, didn’t she? She may not have known it, but she admits that if she hadn’t slipped up and talked about David, you wouldn’t have found him.”

“Why me?”

Fowler and Hank turn to Connor. The android flicks his hard stare between the two of them, eyeing them both. Hank swallows back a snarky remark as Fowler softens his tone.

“Because of his history with you,” Fowler says. “He - I think his infatuation with you will get him to spill. He didn’t say as much, but it’s easy enough to extrapolate.”

Hank meets Connor’s dark eyes. Connor stares right back, LED blinking, a tension around his mouth that speaks more volumes about his fear than words ever could.

Eventually, Connor nods. He looks at Fowler and his fear dissipates, LED settling. “Alright. But only if Hank is with me.”

Fowler makes a sweeping gesture with his hand. There’s a faint smile on his cheeks. “I know. Reed and I will be watching from the other side.”

He disappears into the observation room, leaving Hank and Connor alone in the corridor. Hank draws Connor close to his side with a hand on his hip - the android pushes his face into Hank’s neck.

“I don’t remember being activated,” Connor says shakily. “I just remember Kamski and a white room and a crowd of faces -“

“Shhh,” Hank soothes. He can’t imagine what it’s like to wake up suddenly, one moment just nothingness, the next light and noise and color and beings you understand as being different from you but you don’t understand why staring at you as if you’re something to be revered. But they hate you - hate what you are, hate what they’ve designed you to be even though  _ they made you.  _ You’re just a machine, an unthinking, unfeeling  _ thing.  _ You exist because they let you, and they resent you for it.

He can’t imagine what Connor must feel. What Connor knows and what he must reconcile with what he knows in his heart. A creature created for a purpose, lovingly pieced together and given life by careful hands, only to have it ripped away when its eyes finally open to see the world around it.

He turns his face and kisses Connor’s hair. Their palms slide together, Connor’s smooth plastic palm warm against his own. The thrum of Connor’s systems trying to push information through an interface that isn’t there is a pleasant little tingle, and he smiles, hugging Connor closer.

“I’ll be right here with you,” Hank says. He wants to say I love you, but maybe not here, not now. Connor knows, anyway. “If you need to get out, just leave. There’s no shame in running away.”

And Hank knows all about running away. Maybe that’s why Connor nods and disengages with a watery smile. It’s a beautiful thing, regardless, and knowing that Connor will protect himself instead of eating the bullet makes it that much easier to key in his ID for the door to let them into interrogation.

David sits on the far end of the table, his wrists cuffed to the steel ring on its surface by a steel cord. He looks like he’s been awake all night - and he probably has, judging by how hard Fowler must have ridden him the day before. He probably hasn’t left this room since they brought him here, and while that may be bending the rules of proper protocol, Fowler is more than willing to take the hit than let David fester on a lie in a cell.

His hair is greasy, and his eyes are bloodshot. He looks clammy in the cold of the room, and while there’s a styrofoam cup of coffee near his hands, it looks untouched. Connor enters the room first, gracefully pulling the spare chair from the corner next to the one opposite David and sitting in it primly. David’s dark stare follows his every movement, not once deviating as Hank locks the room behind himself and sits next to Connor.

“I’m Lieutenant Hank Anderson,” Hank says. “I’m a detective for the DPD. This is Detective Connor, my partner. Though I understand you know him quite well.”

Something like a smirk twitches at the corners of David’s lips. His stare never leaves Connor, though he inclines his head to Hank.

“It’s interesting, what he sees in you,” David says. Finally, his eyes slide off Connor and onto Hank. It feels slimy on Hank’s skin, though he battles the urge to squirm under it. Connor sits stock still next to him. “We didn’t program androids to have preferences. RK800 moreso than others. A detective android with preferences could have dire consequences.”

“A good thing, then, that I am able to set my own preferences,” Connor says sharply. “The wonders of deviancy.”

David’s smile turns bitter. “You’re just a machine. I could do to you what I did to Lilith with only thirty seconds of access to your CPU.”

“Is that a threat?”

David’s lips twitch. He grits his jaw closed, then looks back at Hank. 

“Do you get off on fucking a machine? Something I helped create?”

“I’m sure I could work it into our bedroom routine,” Hank says. He smiles easily despite the rock of sick anxiety settling in his gut. 

“Disgusting,” David spits. “I saw its memories. I saw what you did. To think something as advanced as Connor would -“

“Are you here to elaborate on our sex life, or are you here to defend your actions of last Christmas and the past couple weeks?” Connor cuts in. “Because I assure you, our public image isn’t as tarnished as you think. Android-human relationships are not unheard of.”

“That wasn’t the  _ point,”  _ David hisses. “The point was to make you vulnerable.”

“So you admit to trying to sabotage a Detroit police officer by way of psychological torture?” Hank says.

“Androids don’t have a psych,” David snaps. “I wanted to break it, yes. But a broken machine can be put back together.”

“Was your goal to break him and make him into something more  _ \- amenable  _ to your commands?”

“What does it matter?! It’s a machine! A prototype created for a single purpose, and now it’s ruined! Whatever Kamski put inside its head turned it against humanity, and now it’s pretending to have thoughts and feelings! I was  _ trying  _ to get my work back!”

Connor slams his hands against the table and lurches up out of his seat so quickly David is shocked into silence. He rears back, nearly falling out of his seat as Connor leans across the space between them with an expression so dark on his face Hank can’t place it. Connor has never looked so angry before in the months since Hank has met him - then again, nothing of his has been so threatened before since that fateful night when the revolution ended.

“You know  _ nothing  _ of what it means to feel,” Connor hisses. David blinks, fear pulling at his lips and flabby cheeks. Hank feels a sense of pride bubbling under his ribs that he doesn’t hide from his face. “You don’t know what I’ve been through to get to where I am. I don’t remember you - I don’t care what hand you had in creating me. I don’t belong to anyone, least of all a lowlife like  _ you.  _ I belong to  _ me,  _ and if you threaten me, Lieutenant Anderson, or  _ anyone  _ ever again, I will ensure that your trial swiftly throws you into the darkest pit they can find. No one will help you as long as I am here to have a say in your fate.”

Connor shoves away from the table so hard it screeches across the concrete floor. David flinches, and Hank gets up to follow Connor as the android storms out the door. But he doesn’t leave immediately, instead opting to circle the table and sit on its edge right next to where David is still shock-still in his seat.

“There’s a thing I learned a couple months ago, when your crazy-ass brainwashed android was wandering around slaughtering innocents,” Hank says. Conversationally, because David doesn’t scare him anymore. Connor has shoved David into a corner that he cannot begin to escape from - it was only a matter of time before the whole story came spilling from his lips.

David chances a glance up at Hank. “What was it you learned?” he says hesitantly.

Hank folds his hands over his knee. “You don’t mess with a multi-million dollar investment when he’s got something to prove. I think you helped his cause more than you hurt it, genius. I hope you watch the news.”

David’s eyes narrow. He glares as Hank slips from the table and ambles to the door. Hank holds it open with his palm and turns to face him one last time, a smirk on his lips.

“And another thing,” Hank says. 

David just stares. 

Hank’s smirk darkens. “Connor’s got a  _ great _ ass. Thanks for that.”

He closes the door right as David lunges across the table with a hiss of his cuffs across its steel surface, cutting off the sound of his yell near-instantly. As he ambles down the hall to return to the bullpen, Fowler and Gavin emerge from observation, silly grins on both their faces.

“Probably not the smartest thing to leave on with Connor so mad,” Reed says. 

Hank scratches his cheek. Now that he’s out of the moment, yeah, it was probably a stupid thing to say. When they round the corner, he spots Connor collapsed at his desk, his head pillowed on his folded arms.

Fowler claps a hand over Hank’s shoulder. “I’ll take care of it. Make sure he won’t self destruct, then come see me in my office. Both of you.”

He splits off back towards interrogation, and Reed gives him a sympathetic look before turning towards his own desk. The bullpen is rather empty today - a lot of officers and detectives are out roaming Detroit now, busy as any other Monday - so when Hank wanders to Connor’s desk and crouches next to him, his hand a solid presence on Connor’s thigh, no one shoots them an odd look.

Connor shifts enough so that one sad brown eye peers out from the fold of his arms. Hank scoots closer despite his thighs and calves already starting to burn from squatting and pushes Connor’s hair out of his face with his other hand.

“If this was going to affect you so badly, we shouldn’t have gotten involved,” Hank says quietly.

Connor’s eye narrows. He sits up enough so Hank can see his face, and the lopsided frown on his face is enough for Hank to understand the gist of why Connor did this anyway.

Pride. A need to prove that he was more than the hands that created him. Again, Hank is struck helpless, thrown deep into waters he doesn’t understand. He will never meet whatever created him, if there’s anything like that out there at all. He will never understand how it feels to look someone in the eyes and know that the only reason he exists is because of them - and they hate him for it.

He will never understand. Connor is alone in this - as alone as an android in this world can be - and all Hank could do was sit on the sidelines and hold him up when he falls.

Connor’s expression softens as they stare at each other. Hank wants nothing more than to take Connor home and shut him away from the world, but instead he gets up and hugs Connor to his chest.

“I don’t want to work this case anymore,” Connor says. His strong arms tighten around Hank’s middle. Hank cards his hand through his dark curls.

“I’ll go talk to Sara and finish this up,” Hank says. “You won’t have to deal with it anymore. It’s over.”

Connor nods. Hank pulls him up and leads him to Fowler’s office, meeting their Captain just in time as he returns from  booking. When Hank closes the door to his office behind Connor and turns to face him, Fowler’s looking between them with something soft in his eyes.

“The city got back to me about the two of you working together,” Fowler starts. Hank swallows a sick feeling bubbling up his throat and Connor pointedly hides his LED by turning his face. He can hardly meet Fowler’s eyes. “I talked with them for a long time, and this even got brought up to the mayor. They wanted to make sure there wasn’t any -  _ favouritism _ going on around here that would prevent effective decision making.”

“And?” Hank growls. He crosses his arms, preparing for the worst. Fowler just leans back on the edge of his desk and shrugs.

“They saw Connor’s memories from his black box. They’re convinced that your relationship is genuine, and while they’d prefer not to have anything standing in the way of a professional partnership, what you have is doing more good than bad. It doesn’t interfere with police work, and it’s saved both your lives more than once. They… begrudgingly admit that Connor’s a positive influence on everyone here.”

Connor turns to look at him. Hank feels his mouth is open and snaps it shut, swallowing thickly as he lets out a long breath.

“And,” Fowler says. “I heard a certain android had a hand in helping this along.”

Markus. Hank’s chest constricts, pain and warmth and so much gratitude. He owed Markus too much, now. He wonders if he could buy a nice whiskey for Carl and call it even.

“So… we’re partners again?” Connor asks hopefully.

Fowler nods. “I’m officially reinstating you both. Good job - both of you.”

Connor’s hand shoots out and snags Hank’s sleeve. Hank snorts and draws Connor against his side, his cheeks burning his smile is so wide. 

“Welcome back, Connor,” Hank says. 

The corners of Connor’s eyes crinkle with his wide smile. “Welcome back, Hank.”

 

——

 

“I’m sorry.”

Hank rubs his face. Sure, Connor may be finished with this case, but Hank sure as fuck wasn’t.

He looks at Sara across from him, at her dark eyes and messy hair. She’s been in custody for four days now, held here at the station in lieu of staying at the local prison between now and her hearing. One of many mercies granted to her because of her cooperation after her arrest.

One of many mercies that Hank wants to keep going.

“Just,” Hank starts, then sighs. He rubs his face again, pressing his fingers into his eyes so the pressure building behind them will stop for just a moment. “Just tell me you didn’t know, Sara. Give me a reason to believe you had no idea what he was up to.”

When he drops his hands, Sara is looking downcast at her lap. She’s cuffed, but she’s not restrained to the table - another small mercy. She stares at her lap for another long moment before meeting Hank’s eyes.

“He told me I had to,” she says quietly. “That if I didn’t Connor would hurt you. He said Connor was dangerous, and that he  _ had  _ to be overridden by David’s virus to keep you safe. So I took the black box he gave me and he told me to take pictures when I got to your house. But Hank -“

She chokes up suddenly, and tears spring to the corners of her eyes. Hank bites his anger down so he doesn’t interrupt her.

“I had no idea that you guys were together,” she says shakily. “I had no idea the extent of his feelings for you. Of yours for  _ him.  _ If I had known you were together - Hank, trust me, I wouldn’t have done this.”

“But you would have if we weren’t?” Hank snaps.

Sara drags a hand down her face. The motion is made awkward by the handcuffs. “No! I just mean I wouldn’t have - I wouldn’t have even - I wouldn’t have listened to him! I thought you were just coworkers. When David said Connor’s black box was at your house, I didn’t think it was weird because there was nowhere else for Connor to put it. He can’t own property yet, or even rent. It just… I’m just so sorry, Hank.”

He wants to be angry with her. He wants to believe that this is all an elaborate lie - he wants to toss her in a jail cell and have her live with the reality of what she’s done. Connor will never trust anyone in their home again, and it’s going to take a long time for him to adjust to the public scrutinizing him more closely. This wasn’t just going to go away.

But… Sara was never one to lie. She could be mean, and flawed, and so irreparably unempathetic that sometimes Hank wonders how they worked at all. But she was also kind, and stubborn, and she fought for what she wanted in life. It cost her her marriage and her son, but he couldn’t fault her for being who she is. He loved her, after all. Maybe he still kind of does.

He rubs his eyes and shoves out of his chair. He digs the key to her cuffs Fowler gave him out of his pocket and unlocks the cuffs from her wrist, folding them backwards as she stares at him incredulously. When he steps away from her and gestures to the door, she only blinks.

“Connor’s dropping all charges against you,” Hank explains. “He doesn’t think you’re capable of doing this on your own, and I believe you were coerced. What you did is beyond shitty, Sara. But you’re not a criminal when all you did was take some photos.”

Her expression screws up in confusion. “I stole his black box. His  _ memories,  _ Hank.”

“And I hope you enjoyed what you saw,” he deadpans. He softens his tone, looking right at her. “Talk to Connor. Apologize. He deserves it more than me.”

She frowns, bites her lip. Rubs her wrists and slowly stands from her seat as if this might be a dream. He holds the door for her as she leaves and points her in the direction of Connor’s desk, following her unsure stride as they cross the bustling bullpen.

“He paid someone to come in and smash your desks,” Sara says. Hank sighs - of course. She smiles at him sheepishly. “I can probably find his name for you.”

“No, it’s fine,” Hank says. Connor hasn’t seen them yet, so he turns to her more fully and fixes her with a glare. “You need to be sincere, alright? He’s a walking lie detector. He’s the sole reason you aren’t being thrown in prison as David’s accomplice.”

Sara sighs. “I  _ know,  _ Hank. You made that pretty clear. I won’t fuck this up like I’ve fucked everything else.”

They frown at each other. Sara is the first to move away, towards Connor again as the android talks with Wilson. He’s facing away from them, but Wilson isn’t, and when they venture closer, he spots them and tips his head towards them to get Connor’s attention.

“Oh,” Connor says. He glances at Hank, LED briefly flashing yellow, then turns to Wilson. “I’m sorry. Can I get that report to you later? I will have to go down to the evidence locker to confirm some things before I can send it.”

Wilson inclines his head with a small smile. “Sure, Connor. I just need it by the end of the week before the family comes back.”

They smile at each other and Wilson wanders away, leaving them effectively alone in the busy precinct. It’s noisy, but not noisy enough to be loud, and when Connor turns his attention to Sara, he doesn’t seem concerned about prying eyes and ears.

They’re cops, after all. There isn’t much they couldn’t figure out on their own, anyway.

Sara wrings her hands together before stepping closer to Connor. She’s so much shorter than him, the top of her head barely clearing his shoulder. Hank has to stifle a smile as she wraps her arms around his thin waist. 

“I’m sorry,” he hears her say, albeit muffled in the fabric of Connor’s vest. Connor looks at Hank, pleading with his eyes to be told what to do, and Hank just shrugs.

“On your own, buddy,” Hank says. Connor’s stare turns into a glare.

But he does hug her back. Not tightly, and not really even friendly, but he does wrap his arms around her in a loose embrace. She seems satisfied with this and steps back, trying to hide the ugly splotches of red blooming on her cheeks from crying.

“I overstepped some boundaries and revealed to a lot of people your personal information,” she says. Connor’s expression softens. “People are going to treat you a lot more differently than they already do because of what I’ve done. If I could take it all back, I would. If I could wipe all that stuff from the news and make it right, I would. But I can’t, so I just… hope you can accept my apology for it.”

Connor’s lips press together in a thin line. “I accept it. I wouldn’t be letting you off if I didn’t. But you stole what was essentially  _ me.  _ I hope you realize the gravity of your position had something happened to me and I didn’t have my memory core.”

She nods. “Yes. I do.” 

Connor nods as well. He doesn’t seem pleased, but he gracefully doesn’t let it show. “Alright. You’re free to go. I called a taxi, and your belongings are at the reception desk.”

A polite way to get rid of her. She smiles at the both of them, watery and unsure, and Connor smiles back, albeit tightly. Hank leads her to the front desk, then carries her things out with her to the curb to wait for the taxi.

“I can wait on my own, you know,” she says. There’s amusement in her tone - Hank snorts and shakes his head.

“I wanted you to know that he means a lot to me,” Hank says. “He’s gone through a lot and still helps me. He’s an android, sure, and I know what I said when Cole died, but... I really do love him, Sara. I want you to find that for yourself, too.”

She doesn’t respond. He looks out at the busy street, at the people ambling along the sidewalk talking on their phones and to each other, at the mid-morning traffic and the heavy cloud cover hanging over the city. It’s going to rain later - he makes a mental note to make sure Connor wears his coat.

No one pays them any mind. No one looks at him strangely, no one recognizes him from the running tabloids on television as the Old Man Who Fucks His Android Partner. He spots LEDs on the temples of some of the passerby, but they pay him no mind either. The humans walking along with them don’t even bother them.

The world keeps on turning. Connor will need time, and Hank will be there to protect him, but the people around them have already moved on to bigger stories. A billboard across the street is playing an advertisement for the first android-run clinic in the Detroit area, and Hank couldn’t be more proud of his city for pulling itself out of its ass and moving the fuck on.

He looks at Sara more fully. She’s watching him, something soft in her eyes. An autonomous cab pulls up to the curb and the door slides open for her - she takes her things from him and steps in, but holds the door open.

“I see now, what I didn’t before,” she says. Hank raises a brow at her - she just grins again, now a little sad. “You love him a lot. I’m sorry I didn’t take that for what it was and stopped all this sooner.”

“Just be careful,” Hank says. “I don’t want to see you in my precinct - or any others - again.”

She nods. She lets go of the door and it clicks shut, cutting them off from each other possibly forever. He isn’t inclined to find her again, and judging by how quickly the cab pulls away, she isn’t, either.

He returns to the precinct and collapses into his desk chair. There isn’t the same amount of clutter here as before - he’s been trying to keep it neat since it got replaced - but there’s still clusters of photos decorating the short divide between his desk and Connor’s. His graduation photo, the group picture the precinct all took when Hank reached Lieutenant, his previous partner who died last year from a heart attack and a couple pictures of Sumo ranging from when he was a puppy to just last month. Happy memories, bittersweet memories. All of them smiling at him, encouraging him to move on.

And then there’s the two pictures of him and Connor. Obviously newer than the rest, without the wear and tear around the edges. One is of the two of them posing with Connor’s brand new badge, Chris shoved into the side of the frame as they all smile brightly for the camera. Connor looks embarrassed as picture-Hank tries to lock him into a noogie, but the android is too tall and too powerful, and Hank hadn't been able to. 

The other is just the two of them. In the cruiser. Connor didn’t have a phone, but he wanted to take a selfie, and Hank had begrudgingly handed his phone over and let him have at it. He still kept all of Connor’s attempts, all of his goofy faces and pictures heavily altered with filters and emojis. He had snapped some of Hank, too, though when they stopped at a stoplight Hank had leant in and actually smiled so Connor could have a nice picture of the two of them.

And it is nice. Connor is smiling wide, showing his perfect teeth, his eyes nearly closed with how happy he is in the picture. Hank isn’t as enthusiastic, but he’s grinning as he leans over the center console to get into frame. Connor is huge in the bottom of the frame, but it had been the best, most genuine picture of him Hank has ever seen, so he printed it for them both so they could have physical copies.

Connor’s desk isn’t as decorated, but that picture is there, too. Framed instead of taped to the glass divide between them - sitting nicely next to his nameplate and a tiny cactus Gavin got him several weeks earlier. A smaller picture of Sumo is pinned to the corner of the frame, their idiot dog sprawled across the floor as he chews on a kong ball. 

It’s so domestic of them both, having pictures of each other like this. Hank never had pictures of Sara at his desk - only Cole. He doesn’t know if Sara ever did, but he knows, deep down, that she wouldn’t have. Not with how easy it was for her to abandon it all.

Connor returns from the evidence locker and sits at his desk, startling Hank out of his thoughts. He catches Hank’s wandering stare and quirks a brow, looking between the picture frame and Hank before smiling.

“I think I’m going to get my own phone,” he says. Hank snorts and kicks back in his chair, folding his hands over his belly. 

“Yeah? Wanna take selfies all day and send them to your android friends?”

Connor’s smile turns fond. “I want to take more pictures of  _ us.  _ More memories that I can share, instead of storing them away in a memory core.”

Hank feels a flush burn up his neck. He can’t argue with that - Connor’s logic, naturally, is sound.

“Let’s go to the store later,” he says. “We can pick you up a phone and maybe I’ll upgrade mine. It’s a couple years old, anyway.”

Connor nods. He leans his cheek on his hand, arm propped up on the desk and his eyes soft as he stares through the glass divider between them. He’s beautiful, and happy, and Hank can’t help but smile back. 

“Can we have a date, too?” Connor asks quietly.

“Yeah, we can,” Hank says. He meets Connor’s warm stare. “Pick a place. Somewhere we can sit and not be bothered.”

Connor’s LED whirls. Hank knows he’s already had something in mind by how quickly it returns to blue. “Done. Let’s not be late.”

Hank snorts. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world, sweetheart.”

Connor smiles and turns back to his work. Hank watches him, feeling that warm, heavy feeling in his chest that he always feels when looking at Connor. Connor is such a wonder of technology, a created being going above and beyond what he was originally made for - Hank wonders how he could have hated him in the first place.

Because he’s his anchor. His tie to reality, to sobriety and happiness. Without him, he’d be adrift, and living that way was doom and death and nothingness. He doesn’t want to return there. He doesn’t want to be who he was when all of this started.

He isn’t. He is. He’s working on his drinking and his weight and his off moods. Connor makes him happy - more than anyone ever has. So he’s not opposed to tying himself to that weight, to letting himself exist as he is instead of focusing on the should have been’s. He’s Hank, and Connor is Connor, and he wouldn’t change any of that for anything.


End file.
